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CHRISTIANITY AND POSITIVISM: 


A SERIES OF 


LECTURES TO THE TIMES 
ON 


NATURAL THEOLOGY AND APOLOGETICS. 


DELIVERED IN New York, JAN. 16 TO MARCH 20, 1871, ON THE “ ELy 
FouNDATION”’ OF THE UNION THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY. 


BY 


JAMES -McCOsSH, D:D:,~ LE.D., 


PRESIDENT OF THE COLLEGE OF NEW JERSEY, PRINCETON, 


we “3 


NEW YORK: 
ROBERT CARTER AND BROTHERS, 


530 BROADWAY. 


1374. 


Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1871, by 
ROBERT CARTER AND BROTHERS, 


In the Office of the Libranan of Congress at Washington. 


CAMBRIDGE * 
PRESS OF JOHN WILSON AND SON. 


Somes 


-_ 


St fa PREFACE. 


Tus course of Lectures on Christianity and Posi- 
tivism was delivered, by appointment, as the second 
course on the foundation established in the Union 
Theological Seminary by Mr. ZEBULON STILES 
Ey, of New York, in the following terms :— 


“The undersigned gives the sum of ten thousand 
dollars to the Union Theological Seminary of the 
city of New York, to found a Lectureship in the 
same, the title of which shall be ‘ THE Extras P. Ery 
LECTURES ON THE EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY.’ 

“The course of Lectures given on this foundation 
is to comprise any topics that serve to establish the 
proposition that Christianity is a religion from God, 
or that it is the perfect and final form of religion for 
man. 

“Among the subjects discussed may be, — 

“The Nature and Need of a Revelation ; 

“The Character and Influence of Christ and his 
Aposties ; 

“The Authenticity and Credibility of the Scrip- 

tures, Miracles and Prophecy ; 

“The Diffusion and Benefits of Christianity ; and 

“The Philosophy of Religion in its Relation to 
the Christian System. 


1V PREFACE. 


“Upon one or more of such subjects a course of 
ten public Lectures shall be’ given at least once in 
two or three years. ‘The appointment of the Lect- 
urer is to be by the concurrent action of the 
directors and faculty of said Seminary and the un- 
dersigned; and it shall ordinarily be made two 
years in advance. 

“The interest of the fund is to be devoted to the 
payment of the Lecturers, and the publication of 
the Lectures within a year after the delivery of the 
same. ‘The copyright of the volumes thus published 
is to be vested in the Seminary. 

“In case it should seem more advisable, the di- 
rectors have it at their discretion at times to use the 
proceeds of this fund in providing special courses 
of lectures or instruction, in place of the aforesaid 
public lectures, for the students of the Seminary on 
the above-named subjects. 

“Should there at any time be a surplus of the 
fund, the directors are authorized to employ it in 
the way of prizes for dissertations by students of 
the Seminary upon any of the above topics, or of 
prizes for essays thereon, open to public com- 
petition. 

“ZEBULON STILES ELy. 


“New York, May 8th, 1865.” 


TABLE OF CONTENTS. 


PREFACE e ° ° e o ° ° e e ° ° ° e . e ° e e lil 


Hirst Series, 


CHRISTIANITY AND PHYSICAL SCIENCE. 


Lecture Page 
I, THE ARGUMENT FROM DESIGN AS AFFECTED BY 


MODERN DISCOVERIES IN SCIENCE. — CONSER- 
VATION OF FORCE. — STAR Dust. — PROTO- 
PUA RMverTIRICIN ORS LAP EL “ste te a ad eae J 


II. NATURAL SELECTION. — ORIGIN OF MAN. — HIs- 
TORICAL DEVELOPMENT. — CHRIST AND THE 
MOKA A LOWERS (u-statpea tab elke ced, arena oar Sy 


III. Limits To THE LAW OF NATURAL SELECTION. — 
THIS WORLD A SCENE OF STRUGGLE. — AP- 
PEARANCE OF SPIRITUAL LIFE.— FINAL CAUSE. 
‘_—NeEw LireE.— UNITY AND GROWTH IN THE 
WoORLD.— HIGHER PRODUCTS COMING FORTH. 
ema SE Or CE ROGIWESS ON sh foie ene) ate te. ome OF 


Second Series, 


CHRISTIANITY AND MENTAL SCIENCE. 


IV. PROOF OF THE EXISTENCE OF MIND AND OF ITS 
POSSESSING THE CAPACITY OF KNOWLEDGE. — 
DOCTRINES OF NESCIENCE AND RELATIVITY . 97 


vi CONTENTS. 


Lecture 
V. MENTAL PRINCIPLES INVOLVED IN THE THEISTIC. 


ARGUMENT. — OuR IDEAS LEAD US TO BELIEVE 
IN GOD, AND CLOTHE HIM WITH POWER, PER- 
SONALITY, GOODNESS, AND INFINITY.— GOD SO 
FAR KNowN.— CRITICISM OF Mr. HERBERT 
SPENCER.— GOD SO FAR UNKNOWN .... 


VI. PROGRESS OF FREE THOUGHT IN AMERICA. — RA- 
TIONALISM. — BOSTON THEOLOGY. — POSITIVISM 


VII. MATERIALISM. — CIRCUMSTANCES FAVORING IT. . 


— PARTS OF THE BODY MOST INTIMATELY 
CONNECTED WITH MENTAL ACTION. — GROSS- 
ER AND MORE REFINED FORMS OF MATE- 
RIALISM. — BUCHNER, MAUDESLEY, BAIN, 
HuXLEY, —TYNDAL, SPENCER. — OBJECTIONS 
TO MATERIALISM.— MIND NOT ONE OF THE 
CORRELATED PHYSICAL =FPORCES ©. =) qcsetne as 


Third Series. 


CHRISTIANITY AND HISTORICAL INVESTI- 
GATION. 


VIII. Our Lorp’s LIFE A REALITY AND NOT A Ro-| 


MANCE.— CRITICISM OF RENAN’S LIFE OF 
JESUS) 9. “ss saseieet istippacests. 06 cee Glee 


1X. Unity oF our Lorp’s Lirzt,—IN THE ACc- 
COUNTS GIVEN OF Him, —IN His METHOD OF 
TEACHING, —IN His PERSON,—AND IN His 
WORK (ood e tee rie) Sct gin eet Bees oa) e ro ee 


Page 


124 


ISI 


179 


206 


CONTENTS. 


Lecture 
X. THE PLANTING OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. — 


LEGENDARY AND MYTHIC THEORIES. — AC- 
CORDANCE OF THE BooK OF ACTS WITH 
GEOGRAPHY AND HISTORY. — COINCIDENCES 
BETWEEN ACTS AND PAUL’S EPISTLES.— PRES- 
ENT POSITION OF CHRISTIANITY . .... 


i Appendtr, 
Article 
I. GAPS IN THE THEORY OF DEVELOPMENT .. e 
Die DARWIN'S DESCENT OF MGCAN 32°45 (s- vet «0 0 


III. PRINcIPLES OF HERBERT SPENCER’S PHILOSOPHY 


Page 


207 


343 
346 
362 





TO aN 
/ : : - 


LECTURES TO-THE TIMES 


ON 


NATURAL THEOLOGY AND APOLOGETICS. 





L: 


THE ARGUMENT FROM DESIGN AS AFFECTED BY MODERN 
DISCOVERIES IN SCIENCE. — CONSERVATION OF FORCE. 
— STAR Dust. — PROTOPLASM.— ORIGIN OF LIFE. 


R. J. S. MILL recommends those who would 
establish the existence of God to stick to the 
argument from design. As it is lawful to learn 
wisdom from an opponent, I take his counsel; and 
I stand by the evidence furnished by the order and 
adaptation in the universe.. The a friorz proof, so 
proudly advanced by the rationalists of the age now 
passing away, is not likely to meet with much ac- 
ceptance in the time now present, when rationalism 
is being devoured by sensationalism, and the tran- 
scendental philosophy, with its much admired crys 
tals, is melting away,—to give us, may I hope, 
something better, as much so as the buds and 
blossoms of spring are superior to the frost-work 
of winter. The argument from design is that there 
are evidences everywhere, in heaven and earth, in 
plant and animal, of natural agents being so fitted 
to each other, and so combining to produce a be- 
neficent end, as to show that intelligence must have 
been employed in co-ordinating and arranging 
I 


2 "NATURAL THEOLOGY. 


them. When unfolded, it comprises a body of 
facts, and it involves a principle. The principle is 
that an effect implies a cause. The special con- 
sideration and defence of this law may be adjourned 
to a future lecture, when it will come up in more 
favorable circumstances to admit of a full discus- 
sion. In the first series of lectures in this course, 
we are invited to contemplate the phenomena and 
laws of the physical world, so far as they bear 
marks of being adapted to each other by a design- 
ing mind contemplating a good end. 

The argument is one which commends itself to 
all minds, though it is put into shape only by the 
logician and the expounder of natural theology. 
The child finds the impression stealing in upon him, 
as he inspects the curious objects around him, — 
the fir cone, the flower, the berry, the structure of 
his favorite animal, or those lights kindled nightly 
in the heavens, or as he is taught to connect these 
daily gifts with God the giver. The peasant, the 
savage, feels it, as he sees the grass and trees 
springing and growing and bearing seed, as he is 
led to observe the self-preserving instincts of the 
brute creatures, as he takes a passing survey of the 
wondrous provisions for maintaining life in his own 
frame, or finds himself furnished with food and 
clothing by very complicated arrangements of Prov- 
idence. Flowing spontaneously into the minds 
of all, the conviction will force itself into the inner- 
most heart of the speculative unbeliever. “No 
one,” said David Hume, as he walked home one 


ARGUMENT FROM DESIGN. 3 


beautiful evening with a friend, “can look up to 
that sky without feeling that it must have been put 
in order by an intelligent being.” “But who made 
all these things °?” was the curt reply of Napoleon 
Bonaparte, who had been obliged to listen to the 
wretched sophistries of a set of French atheists, 
bred in the bloody revolutionary period, — “ but 
who made all these things?” pointing to the heavens. 

The argument is one and the same in all ages. 
“He that formed the eye, shall He not see?” is the 
way in which the Psalmist expresses it. Socrates 
is represented, in the “Memorabilia” of Xenophon, 
as pointing to the traces of purpose in the eye, the 
ear, and the teeth, and to the care taken of every 
individual man in the Divine providence. Though 
the argument is identical, yet it takes different 
forms in different ages; one reason of which is to 
be found in the circumstance that the physical facts 
require to be differently stated as science opens to 
us new views of the nature of the universe. Balbus 
the Stoic, the representative of theism in Cicero’s 
treatise “ De Natura Deorum,” drew a solid enough 
argument from the order of the heavenly bodies, 
though he assumed that the sun moved round the | 
earth. Those living since the acceptance of the 
theory of Copernicus expound the facts in a more 
scientific manner, but not more conclusively, as 
bearing on the relation of God to his works. The 
Scriptures tell us that man cannot number the stars, 
but it has been found that he can count the stars 
seen by the naked eye; but the science which 


4 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 


enables him to do this has disclosed other stars, so 
that it is still true that the stars cannot be reckoned 
for multitude. It is much the same with the argu- 
ment for the Divine existence : modern investigation 
modifies old views only to open new and grander 
ones. The peasant, who notices a watch going and 
pointing to the hour, is as sure that there is design 
in it as the mechanic who can trace the relation of 
all the parts, the mainspring, the wheels, and 
the hands. And the same peasant is as sure that 
there is purpose in the hand as Sir Charles Bell 
was, when he pointed out the wonderful adaptations 
of the various bones and joints and muscles and 
nerves. A theistic writer living in the middle of 
the seventeenth century,—say Milton in writing 
“Paradise Lost,” or Charnock in delivering his 
* Discourses on the Attributes,” — could not ex- 
pound the revolutions of the heavenly bodies in 
the same satisfactory manner as one living in the 
following century, when Newton had established 
the law of universal gravitation; but the one might 
_have as reasonable a conviction as the other that 
“the heavens declare the glory of God.” 

It is a humiliating but instructive fact that many 
new discoveries in physical science have, in the 
first instance, been denounced as atheistic, because 
they were not conformable to the opinions which 
religious men had been led to entertain, not of God, 
but of the phenomena of the world. Even the 
illustrious Leibnitz charged the system of Newton 
with having an irreligious tendency, and (as I once 


WHAT SCIENCE HAS TO DO. 5 


/ 


heard Humboldt denouncing, in an interview which 
I had with him a few months before his death) 
sought to poison the mind of the famous Princess 
Sophie of Prussia, against him. It is a curious 
circumstance that the law of gravitation had to be 
defended on the side of religion, at the beginning 
of last century, by Maclaurin, in his “ Account of 
the Discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton.” In the last 
age, numbers trained in a narrow theological geol- 
ogy (not found in Scripture, but drawn out of it by 
wrong inference) opposed the discoveries as to the 
successive strata and races of animated beings on 
the earth’s surface, and could scarcely be reconciled 
to them when such men as Buckland and Chalmers, 
Hitchcock and Hugh Miller, showed that these facts 
widened indefinitely the horizon of our vision, — 
added a new province to the universe of God, by 
disclosing a past history before unknown, — and 
opened new and grander views of the prescience 
and preordination of God. And, in our times, there 
are persons who cannot take in these new doctrines 
of natural history and comparative language, not 
because they run counter to any doctrine or precept 
of religion, but because they conflict with certain 
historical or scientific preconceptions which have 
become bound up with their devout beliefs. 

All this shows that religious men gua religious 
men are not to be allowed to decide for us the truths 
of science. Conceive an Ecumenical Council at 
Rome, or an Assembly of Divines at Westminster, 
or an Episcopal Convocation at Lambeth, or a Con- 


4 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 


gregational Council at Plymouth, or a Methodist 
Conference in Connecticut, taking upon it to decide 
for or against the discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton, 

or the grand doctrine established in our day of the 
Conservation of Force and Correlation of all the 
Physical Forces, on the ground of their being favor- 
able or unfavorable to religion! Ihave heard fer- 

vent preachers denouncing the nebular hypothesis of 

the heavens and the theories of the origin of organic 
species in a manner and spirit which was only fitted 
to damage the religion which they meant to recom- 
mend, in the view of, every man of science who 
heard them; and which drew from others of us the 
wish that they had kept by what they were fit for, 

proclaiming the gospel to perishing sinners, and illus- 
trating the graces of the Christian character, and 
left science to men of science. On the other hand, 
our scientific men are not, as scientific men, qualified 
to find out and to estimate the theological bearings 
of the laws which they have discovered. For if 

there be a religious, there may also be an irrelig- 
ious bias. ‘There may be some as anxious in their 
hatred to expel God from his works as there are 
others resolute in their love to bring him in at times 
or in ways in which he does not choose to appear. 

The laws of the physical world are to be determined 
by scientific men, proceeding in the way of a care- 
ful induction of facts; and, so far as they follow their 
method, I have the most implicit faith in them, and 
I have the most perfect confidence that the truth 
which they discover will not run counter to any 


PRINCIPLE ASSUMED. 7 


other truth. But when they pass beyond their own 
magic circle, they become weak as other men. I 
do not commit to them —I reserve to myself — the 
right of interpreting the religious bearings of those 
laws which they disclose to our wondering eyes. 

We proceed to consider the religious aspect of 
some of the recent discoveries, real or supposed, 
of physical investigation; which it is all the more 
necessary to do, because there is a certain school 
studiously seeking to leave the impression that the 
argument from design has been set aside by an 
advanced science. We shall show that, while the 
proofs drawn by such writers as Paley from the 
_ wondrous leverage and curiously formed joints of 
the animal frame are untouched by recent researches 
and remain as strong and conclusive as ever, these 
new views opened of the history of the world dis 
close evidence which could not have been discov- 
ered in earlier ages. 

I assume only the one principle already an- 
nounced, that every effect is caused. Not that 
every thing has a cause, — for this would make us 
look for a cause of the uncaused, which is God, — 
but that every thing which begins to be has a cause. 
In employing this law, I do not care for the present 
whether it be regarded as a friorz or a posteriori, 
-as discovered by reason or by experience. It is 
acknowledged to be presupposed and involved in 
all scientific research, to be the most universal law 
of the operations of physical nature, a law with 
no known exceptions. In our extensive journey 


8 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 


through the ages of time we shall diScover many 
things which begin to appear; and we feel justified 
in arguing that they must have a cause, a cause 
adequate to produce them. 

In conducting our argument, it may be proper to 
premise two points to avert misapprehension. First, 
we are not to be precluded from seeking and dis- 
covering a final cause, because we have found an 
efficient cause. Using, as being as good as any 
other, the illustration which has become associated 
with the name of Paley, —on seeing a watch, we 
argue that it has a final cause, a purpose to serve, a 
contemplated end: this we infer from the fitting of 
pin, wheel, axle, cylinder, and hands, in order to 
intimate the time to us who need “to number our 
days.” Yet this little machine has been fashioned, 
and it continues to go, solely by mechanical power. 
It is the same with the traces of design we discover 
in nature: they all spring from the powers and 
properties of material agencies; but the proof of 
purpose is derived from the collocation of things, 
from the disposition of the parts, from the adapta- 
tion of property to property, from their being jointed 
on one to another, from their being dovetailed into 
each other, from their combining and concurring 
towards a given end in which order and benev- 
_olence are manifested. Our inference is, that these 
forces, blind and unintelligent in themselves, must 
be directed by an intelligence which sees and fore- 
sees. The rays of light come from the sun ninety 
tive millions of miles away: they come in vibrations 


EFFICIENT AND FINAL CAUSE. 9 


according to mechanical laws. The eye is made 
up of coats, humors, lenses, nerves, all formed 
according to chemical and physiological laws. The 
rays of light emitted from the sun are reflected from 
objects on the earth, and alighting on the eye are 
refracted and combined so as to form on the retina 
an image of the objects from which they have come, 
and which we see in consequence. The adaptations 
necessary to accomplish this are many and varied, 
and some of them of a very delicate and recondite 
character. ‘To mention only two instances. There 
is the adjustment of the eyeball to objects at varying 
distances so as to allow the rays of light to form the 
image on the retina, and thus furnish distinct vision. 
Helmholtz has shown that this is done without any 
will or effort on our part. It is done by the ciliary 
muscle, which contracts for near objects and relaxes 
for distant ones. Again, Newton thought that there 
could not be a refracting telescope of any great 
power, because of the aberration of the rays of 
light as they are drawn to a focus. Dollond, in a 
later age, ingeniously avoided this difficulty by an 
achromatic apparatus in which the object glass was 
composed of crown glass and flint glass, and the 
dispersive power of the one was counteracted by 
that of the other. But there has been all along, if 
not an identical, yet an analogous provision in the 
eye, so that in the healthy organism the image is 
perfect, having neither penumbra nor prismatic 
colors. Now the rays of light coming from the 


sun have not formed the eye, nor has the eye formed 
1* 


IO NATURAL THEOLOGY. 


the rays of light. The question arises, Whence the 
correspondence between the two? Proceeding on 
the principles on which science proceeds, it is as 
certain as any truth in science that the conformity 
must have risen from a preordained disposition of 
the two, brought about by a series of causes evidently 
contemplated from the beginning. “And he that 
formed the eye, shall he not see?” When Napoleon 
asked Laplace why God was not mentioned in his 
“ Méchanique Céleste,” he replied, “I have no need 
of this hypothesis.” But, following the principles 
of reason, there is need of such an hypothesis to 
account, if not for the agencies, yet for the harmo- 
nious combination of agencies in the fitting of every 
one thing to every other, which we see alike in the 
stars in their courses, and the structure and move- 
ments of the eye, and indeed, if only we carefully 
inspect it, in every object in the earth and in the 
heavens. 

It is necessary to make such simple and obvious 
statements as these, because not a few physicists are 
themselves laboring under the impression, and are 
conveying it to others, that as soon as we have dis- 
covered the physical cause of an occurrence it is 
no longer necessary to call in a final cause; and, as 
Laplace expressed it, final causes in “the eyes of 
philosophers are nothing more than the expression 
of the ignorance in which we are of the real causes,” 
and “are being pushed away to the bounds of knowl- 
edge.” But the correct account is, that final cause 
may best be seen in the concurrence of physical 


IGNORANCE OF POWERS. OF NATURE. 11 


agents to produce a given end; and the advance of 
knowledge, so far from driving back final cause, 
only enables us to give a more definite account of 
its nature, and to specify the powers which are made 
to combine, to effect the obviously contemplated 
result. Darwin has shown that certain plants are 
fertilized by insects, such as bees carrying the pollen 
from the male to the female; and thus he accounts 
for the prevalence of certain forms and colors in 
flowers. Be it so, we are only enabled the better 
to see in these insects the means of accomplishing 
a designed end. ‘There is a like error lurking in a 
favorite principle of Hegel: “That which they call 
the final cause of a thing is nothing but its inward 
nature.” Now it is doubtless the inward nature of 
a physical cause to produce its effect; but the. pur- 
pose or design expressed by the phrase “final cause” 
is seen in the coincidence and co-operation of inde- 
pendent physical causes, so as to secure an end which 
no one of them could accomplish by its own inward 
nature. It is from the collocation of canine teeth, 
strong claws and muscles, and a flesh-digesting 
stomach, in carnivorous animals, that we see there 
has been an end contemplated by the harmony, 
which could not have been effected by the inward 
nature of any of the parts. 

To correct prevailing misapprehension, it is nec- 
essary to announce a second preliminary point: that 
our argument does not require us to know what are 
the ultimate powers of nature. ‘These are certainly 
not known at present. and they may never be 


I2 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 


known by the science of man. If they be many, 
there is need of mutual accommodation and recip- 
rocal action, to suit them one to the other, and make 
them accomplish a good end. If they be few, there 
is equal need of a nice adjustment, to make them 
fulfil the infinitely varied purposes which they serve. 
If the number of elementary bodies in nature be 
sixty, as chemical science says, provisionally, that 
they are; and if the number of properties possessed 
by them—mechanical, chemical, electric, magnetic, 
vital — be also numerous, there is surely need of a 
marshalling of these hosts, to keep them from clash- 
ing, and working confusion and destruction. Or, 
if scientific research can succeed in showing that 
all these may be reduced to a dozen, or half a 
dozen, an amazing skill must be required to. make 
them produce those infinitely diversified bodies and 
those wonderfully constructed frames which we see 
in nature. I have heard Paganini draw exquisite 
music from one string, wrought upon in all sorts 
of directions and with all kinds of flexures; and I] 
have listened to strains produced by hundreds of 
instruments, each with a complexity of strings: but 
in the one case, as in the other, combination and 
skill of the highest order were required to create 
and sustain the melody and the harmony. 

Carrying with us these two principles, so obvious, 
and yet so frequently overlooked, let us now take a 
glance at some of the recent speculations as to the 
construction of the universe. We find in the physi- 
cal world at least two ultimate existences, — Matter 


CONSERVATION OF FORCE. 13 


and Force. I believe that we know both of these 
by intuition, and by no process can we get rid of 
the one or the other. As to Force, it will be 
expedient to look for a moment at the grandest sci- 
entific truth established in our day, — a doctrine 
worthy of being placed alongside that of universal 
gravitation, —I mean that of the Conservation of 
Physical Force; according to which, the sum of 
Force, actual and potential, in the knowable uni- 
verse is always one and the same: it cannot be 
increased, and it cannot be diminished. It has 
long been known that no human, no terrestrial 
power can add to or destroy the sum of Matter in 
the cosmos. You commit a piece of paper to the 
flames, and it disappears; but it is not lost: one 
part goes up in smoke, and another goes down in 
ashes; and it is conceivable that at some future 
time the two may unite, and once more form paper. 
“Why may not imagination trace the noble dust of 
Alexander, till we find it stopping a bung-hole?” 
“As thus: Alexander died, Alexander was buried, 
Alexander returneth to dust; the dust is earth; 
of earth we make loam: and why of that loam, 
-whereto he was converted, might they not stop a 
beer-barrel? 
“‘ Imperial Cesar, dead, and turned to clay, 
Might stop a hole to keep the wind away: 


O, that the earth, which kept the world in awe, 
Should patch a wall t? expel the winter’s flaw!” 


As man cannot create or annihilate matter, so he 
cannot create or annihilate force. This doctrine 


14 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 


has been scientifically established in our day by 
men like Mayer, Joule, Henry, and others. We 
now regard it as one and the same force, but under 
a vast variety of modifications, which warms our 
houses and our bodily frames, which raises the 
steam and impels the engine, which effects the dif- 
ferent chemical combinations, which flashes in the 
lightning and lives in the plant.* Man may direct 
the force, and make it go this way or that way ; but 
he can do so only by means of force under a differ- 
ent form, — by force brought into his frame by his 
food, obtained directly, or indirectly through the 
animal, from the plant, which has drawn it from 
the sun; and as he uses or abuses it, he cannot 
lessen or augment it. JI move my hand; and, in 
doing so, I move the air, which raises insensibly 
the temperature of the room, and may lead to 
chemical changes, and excite electric and magnetic 
currents, and take the circuit of the universe with- 
out being lost or lessened. Now the bearing of this 
doctrine on religion seems to be twofold. First, it 
furnishes a more striking manifestation than any thing 
known before of the One God, with his infinitely 
varied perfections, — of his power, his knowledge, 
his wisdom, his love, his mercy ; and we should see 
that one Power blowing in the breeze, smiling in 
the sunshine, sparkling in the stars, quickening us 

* I was prepared, from its first announcement, to receive this 
truth; for it follows directly from a doctrine laid down by me 
twenty-one years ago, in my work on ‘‘ The Method of the Divine 


Government” (Book 11.), that all bodies possess fixed properties, 
which cannot be increased nor lessened. 


CORRELATION OF THE FORCES. I5 


as we bound along in the felt enjoyment of health, 
efflorescing in every form and hue of beauty, and 
showering down daily gifts upon us. The pro- 
foundest minds in our day, and in every day, have 
been fond of regarding this force, not as something 
independent of God, but as the very power of God 
acting in all action; so that “in him we live, and 
move, and have our being.” But, secondly, it 
shows us that in God’s works, as in God himself, 
there is a diversity with the unity; so that force 
manifests itself now in gravity, now in molecular 
attraction and motion, now in chemical affinities 
among bodies, now in magnetic and diamagnetic 
properties, now in vital assimilation. And we see 
that all these forces are correlated: so that the doc- 
trine of the Correlation of all the varied Physical 
Forces stands alongside of the Conservation of the 
one Physical Force; and by the action of the whole, 
and of every part made to combine and harmonize, 
there arise beauteous forms and harmonious colors; 
the geometry of crystals; the types of the plant and 
of every organ of the plant, the branches, the roots, 
the leaves, the petals, the pistils, the stamens; and 
the types of the animal, so that every creature is 
fashioned after its kind, and every limb takes its 
predetermined form, while there is an adaptation 
of every one part to every other, of joint to column, 
and joint to joint, of limb to limb, and of limb to 
body, of the ear to the vibrating medium, and the 
nostrils to odors, and the eye to the varied undula- 
tions of light. 


16 \NATURAL THEOLOGY. " 


So much for Force, with its Correlations. But 
with the Forces we have the Matter of the universe, 
in which, I believe, the Forces reside. It is main- 
tained that the worlds have been formed out of Star 
Dust. Now, I have to remark as to this star dust, 
first of all, that it is at best an hypothesis. No 
human eye, unassisted, has ever seen it, as it gazed, 
on the clearest night, into the depths of space. It 
is doubtful whether the telescope has ever alighted 
upon it, in its widest sweeps. Lord Rosse’s tele- 
scope, in its first look into the heavens, resolved 
what had before been reckoned as star dust into - 
distinctly formed stars. But I am inclined to admit 
the existence of star dust as an hypothesis. I 
believe it explains phenomena which require to be 
explained, and which cannot otherwise be accounted 
for. I allow it freely, that there is evidence that, 
the planets and moons and sun must have. been 
fashioned out of some such substance, at first incan- 
descent, and then gradually cooling. But, then, 
it behoves us to look a little more narrowly into 
the nature of this star dust. Was it ever a mass 
of unformed matter, without individuality, without 
properties? Did it contain within itself these sixty 
elementary substances, with their capacities, their 
affinities, their attractions, their repulsions? When 
a meteor Comes, as a stranger, within our terrestrial 
sphere, either out of this original star dust or out 
of planets which have been reduced to the state 
of original star dust, it is found to have the same 
components as bodies on our earth, and these with 


STAR DUST. 17 


the same properties and affinities. The spectro 
scope, which promises to reveal more wonders than 
the telescope or microscope, shows the same ele- 
ments —such as hydrogen and sodium—#in the 
sun and stars as in the bodies on the earth’s surface. 
The star dust, then, has already in it these sixty 
elementary bodies, with all their endowments, 
— gravitating, mechanical, chemical, magnetic. 
Whence these elements? Whence their correla- 
tions, their attractions, their affinities, their fittings 
into each other, their joint action? It is by no 
means the strongest point in my cumulative argu- 
ment; but it does look as if, even at this stage, 
there had been a harmonizing power at work, and 
displaying foresight and intelligence. 

As to this material, we must hold one or other of 
two opinions. One is, that it had from the begin- 
ning all the capacities which afterwards appear in 
the worlds formed out of it. It has not only the 
mechanical, but the chemical, the electric powers 
of dead matter; the vital properties of plants and 
animals, such as assimilation, absorption, contrac- 
tility; and the attributes of the conscious mind, as 
of perception by the senses, of memory, imagina- 
tion, comparison, of the appreciation of beauty, of 
sorrow, of joy, of hope, of fear, of reason, of con- 
science, of will. These capabilities may not yet be 
developed: but they are there in a latent, a dormant 
state in the incandescent matter; and are ready, on 
the necessary conditions being supplied, to rise to 
the instincts of animals, —to the love of a mother 


iS NATURAL THEOLOGY. 


for her offspring, —to the sagacity of the dog, the 
horse, or the elephant, — to the genius of a Moses, 
a Homer, a Socrates, a Plato, an Aristotle, a Paul, 
a John, a Shakespeare, a Milton, a Newton, a 
Leibnitz, or an Edwards. Were all this capacity 
in the star dust, I would be constrained to seek for 
a cause of it in a Power possessed of knowledge, 
wisdom, and beneficence, planting seeds in that 
soil to come forth in due season. JBut there is 
another supposition: that these qualities were not in 
the original matter, but were added from age to 
age, —it may- be, according to law; and if so, they 
must have come from a Power out of and beyond 
the star dust, from a Power possessed of reason and 
affection. I know not that science can determine 
absolutely which of these alternatives it should take. 
But take either; and, on the principle of effect 
implying cause, the mind must rise to the contem- 
plation of a Being who must himself be possessed 
of intelligence, in order to impart intelligence. 
This star dust has a greater heaviness or thick- 
ness of parts in certain places than at others: and, 
by the attraction of its particles, masses of it begin 
to rotate, and one planet is set off after another; 
and the planets cast off satellites, or rings; and the 
sun settles in the centre, with bodies circulating 
round him. All this has taken place according to 
natural law: but we infer that there has been a 
guardian Intelligence guiding and watching the 
process; otherwise, the heavy parts causing the 
rotation might have been in the wrong places in 


PROTOPLASM. 19 


reference to each other, and the circling bodies at 
the wrong distances; and, as the result, a scene of 
never-ceasing confusion, in which the elements and 
powers would have been warring with each other, 
and rendering it impossible that there should ap- 
pear any of the higher products of life, intelligence, 
and love. 

The earth is now formed, an oblate spheroid, 
spinning round its own axis, and round the sun. 
By the action and counteraction of the inner heat 
and outer cold, there comes to be a solid land, with 
a corrugated surface of hill and dale, ocean and_ 
atmosphere. There follow rocks, deposited by 
water or thrown out by fire; and, as these are 
found to come forth, by aqueous or igneous process, 
in a state of order and adaptation, and are made to 
serve a beneficent end towards the living creatures, 
we argue that they are constructed on a plan. 

But as yet there has been no life, vegetable or 
animal. But the protoplasm now appears. We 
shall let Professor Huxley describe that now famous 
substance, which he has taken under his special 
protection, and by which he works such wonders. 
It is the material out of which all living forms are 
made, as pottery is from the clay; it is the elemen- 
tary life-stuff of all plants and all antmals. You 
may see it as well as anywhere else in the hairs to 
which the nettle owes its stinging power. “The 
whole hair consists of a very delicate outer case of 
wood, closely applied to the inner surface of which is 
a layer of semi-fluid matter full of innumerable gran- 


20 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 


ules of extreme minuteness. This semi-fluid lining 
is protoplasm, which thus constitutes a kind of bag 
full of limpid liquid.” The protoplasmic layer of 
the nettle hair is seen to be in a condition of unceas- 
ing activity. Local contractions of the whole thick- 
ness of its substance pass slowly and gradually from 
point to point, and give rise to the appearance of 
progressive waves, just as the bending of the suc- 
cessive stalks of corn by a breeze produces the 
apparent billows of a cornfield. In addition to these 
movements, and independently of them, the gran- 
ules are driven in relatively rapid streams, and there 
is a general. stream up one side and down another. 
This protoplasm, according to Professor Huxley,” is 
“the formal basis of all life. It is the clay of the 
potter; which, bake and paint it as he will, remains 
clay, separated by artifice, and not by nature, from 
the commonest brick or sun-dried clod. Thus it 
becomes clear that living powers are cognate, and 
that all living forms are fundamentally of one char- 
acter.” He says that “all vital action is the result 
of the molecular forces of the protoplasm which 
displays it. And if so, it must-be true, in the same 
sense and to the same extent, that the thoughts to 
which I am now giving utterance, and your thoughts 
regarding them, are the expression of molecular 
changes in that matter of life which is the source 
of our other vital phenomena.” 

Now, upon this account of protoplasm I have to 
remark that the great body of naturalists do not 


* Physical Basis of Life. 


PROTOPLASM. OT 


allow that it is correct. One of the most erudite 
men of our day, Dr. Stirling,* in a paper read _ be- 
fore the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, 
has shown that the researches of the eminent Ger- 
man physiologists are against him. They do not 
admit that one and the same protoplasm is the mat- 
ter of all organisms. It is certain that all proto- 
plasm is not chemically identical. ‘The protoplasm 
differs in different tissues, is different in the bone 
from*what it is in the muscle, and different in the 
nerves and brain from what it is in any other part 
of the frame. Again, it is affirmed that the proto- 
plasm differs in different plants and animals, each 
of which has its own kind, which is not interchange- 
able with that of the rest. 

But we may let Mr. Huxley’s account of it pass. 
From his description of it, it is evident that this 
elementary life-stuff 1s a very complex body, with 
very peculiar endowments, — quite as likely to work 
evil as to work good, and requiring to be directed 
in order to operate beneficently. It is composed 
chemically of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitro- 
gen; inone word, of protein. But then protein is 
not protoplasm: no power known to us can turn 
protein into protoplasm. Science, at its present ad- 
vanced stage, cannot change dead matter into living 
matter. No chemist can do it in his laboratory. 
The most prying inquiry, by microscope or other- 
wise, into the laboratory of nature, has not detected 
her producing living matter in the form of proto- 


* As Regards Protoplasm. 


22 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 


plasm, or any other, except by matter already living. 
No known plant can live upon the uncompounded 
elements of protoplasm. “A plant,” says Mr. Hux- 
ley himself, “supplied with pure carbon, hydrogen, 
oxygen, and nitrogen, phosphorus, sulphur, and 
the like, would as infallibly die as the animal in 
his bath of smelling salts, though it would be sur- 
rounded by all the constituents of protoplasm.” 
Professor Huxley, indeed, tells us that “when 
carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen are brought 
together under certain conditions, they give rise to 
the still more complex body, protoplasm; and this 
protoplasm exhibits the phenomena of life.” Under 
certain conditions: we must not let these words slip 
in sq quietly, as Mr. Huxley would have it. These 
conditions, be they what they may, constitute the 
difference between dead protein and living proto- 
plasm. And here I may remark that Mr. Mill has 
been showing (I think successfully, and I have 
been aiding him in my own way) that what are 
usually called conditions are truly parts of the cause, 
which is the sum of the conditions, —the cause, as. 
I have labored to prove, being dual, plural, com- 
plex, always implying more than one agent; and 
it is only when all are present that the effect is 
produced. We say the organ produces music on 
the condition of one playing on it; but surely the 
man playing is as essential a part of the cause as 
the organ itself.* By no skill can the chemist turn 


* “Tt is very common to single out one only of the antece- 
dents under the denomination of Cause, calling the others 


GONDITIONS PARTS. OF CAUSES. 23 


protein into protoplasm. Professor Huxley thinks 
it can be done on conditions to him unknown. When 
he knows what the conditions are, and makes them 
known to me, I am sure I will be able to discover 
adaptation and design in them. Herbert Spencer 
tells us that chemists have shown that many sup- 


merely Conditions.” ‘‘The real cause is the whole of these ante- 
cedents; and we have, philosophically speaking, no right to give 
the name of cause to one of them, exclusive of the others.” — 
Mill's Logic, B. 111. c. v. § 3. J have shown that in material nature 
there is always need of the action of two or more agents, in 
order to an effect. — Method of Divine Government, B. 11. c.i. § 1. 
An Examination of Mr. FS. Mill’s Philosophy, c. xiiie: “If a 
ball moves in consequence of another striking it, there is need of 
the one ball as well as the other; and the cause, properly speak- 
ing, consists of the two ina relation to each other. But not only 
is there a duality or plurality in the cause: there is the same 
(Mr. Mill has not noticed it) in the effect. The effect consists not 
merely of the one ball, the bali struck and set in motion, but 
also of the other ball which struck it, and which has now lost 
part of its momentum. By carrying out this doctrine, we can 
determine what is meant by ‘condition’ and ‘ occasion,’ when the 
phrases are applied to the operation of causation. When we 
speak of an agent requiring a ‘ condition,’ an ‘ occasion,’ or ‘cir- 
cumstances,’ in order to its action, we refer to the other agent 
or agents required, that it may produce a particular effect. Thus, 
that fire may burn, it is necessary to have fuel or a combustible 
material. In order that my will may move my arm, it is needful 
to have the concurrence of a healthy motor nerve. So much 
for the dual or plural agency in the cause. But there is a similar 
complexity in the effect,” &c. To apply this general principle to 
the case before us: protein, it is said, may become protoplasm 
under certain conditions. These conditions, whatever they be, 
constitute the difference between the two; and Mr. H. has thrown 
no light on the production of protoplasm, till he has shown us 
what are these conditions, which ought to be represented as 
forming an essential part of the cause. 


py ee NATURAL THEOLOGY. | 


posed organic substances are inorganic. Be it so, 
that men may have made a mistake in the past 
which they are seeking to rectify in the present. 
And then, in the usual dogmatic way of a man who 
may see clearly much truth, but does not see other 
truths by which it is modified, he assures us that no 
chemist doubts but he will be able to turn inor- 
ganic into organic matter. All I have to say on 
this is, that when the chemist has done it, and 
shown the way by which he has done it, I am con- 
fident I will be able to point out a curious adaptation 
in these conditions previously unknown, but now 
known, by which he has accomplished the feat. If 
the things composing the conditions were in the star 
dust, they were there as seeds ready to burst forth 
in due time. If they have come from without, they 
have come in so appropriately as to show that they 
have come of purpose, — whether by natural law or 
not, we may not be able to tell till the man of 
science has made them known to us. 

And then “ protoplasm,” says Stirling, “can only 
be produced by protoplasm, and each of all the 
innumerable varieties of protoplasm only by its own 
kind. _ For the protoplasm of the worm we must go 
to the worm, and for that of the toadstool to the 
toadstool. In fact, if all living beings came from 
protoplasm, it is quite as certain that but for living 
beings protoplasm would disappear.” Where then 
did we get the first protoplasm and the various kinds 
of protoplasm, is still the question. 

And then it is to be remembered that naturalists 


NEED OF SEED OR EGG. 25 


do not admit that protoplasm is all that is necessary 
to produce the living organism. It has long been 
known that organized matter, vegetable and animal, 


is made up of cells. “All the great German his- 
tologists still hold by the cell, and can hardly open 
their mouths without mention of it.” “They speak 


still of cells as self-complete organisms that move 
and grow, that nourish and reproduce themselves, 
and that perform specific functions. Ovmauzs cellula 
e celluda is the rubric they work under as much now 
as ever.” Not only so, but it seems that “brain 
cells only generate brain cells, and bone cells bone 
cells.” If a cell can only be produced from a cell, 
the question when and whence and how do we get 
the first cell is still pressed upon us, and requires us 
to callin a new set of conditions, which I hold must 
imply a fitting and a purpose. 

Nor is this all. Not only do all cells proceed from 
cells; but all organisms, all plants and animals, 
proceed from a seed or egg. It is still true as ever, 
omne vivum ab ovo. Not even protoplasm can give 
us an organized being, even the lowest, without a 
germ. An attempt was made a few years ago by 
M. Pouchet to get organized beings, not from unor- 
ganized, which he did not try, but from stagnant 
water containing organized matter without germs. 
But M. Pasteur, the distinguished naturalist of 
Paris, came after him and showed that there must 
have been germs in the water which was employed. 
He showed first that, if you allowed him to destroy 


all germs in the matter experimented on by expos- 
2 


26 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 


ing it to a sufficiently high temperature, no living 
creatures would appear. He showed farther — by 
experiments conducted in low, marshy places, then 
on the Jura range, and finally on the high Alps — 
that living beings did or did not appear just accord- 
ing as there were seeds in the organized matter ; 
that is, that they came forth in greatest numbers in 
the low, marshy places, in smaller numbers in the 
higher region of Jura, and that very few appeared 
in the cold region of the Upper Alps. And in re- 
gard to the general question, he has demonstrated 
that when air is passed through cotton wool, which, 
acting as a strainer, arrests the germs, no life can 
be made to appear. And to prove that this was not: 
effected by any occult change produced in the air 
by cotton wool, he did the same by a bent tube, 
which allows free passage to the air, but does not 
allow the germs to pass, as in doing so they would 
have to mount upward. ‘These experiments were 
reckoned as decisive at the time, and are referred 
to by the great body of naturalists in Great Britain 
and on the Continent as decisive still. Mr. Huxley 
refers to them in his recent address to the British 
Association for the Advancement of Science, and 
says: “They appear to me now, as they did seven 
years ago, to be models of accurate experimentation 
and logical reasoning.” It is thus shown that not 
only is there no proof of such a thing as spontaneous 
generation, —that is, the production of organized 
out of unorganized matter, — but that there cannot 
be organisms formed out of organic matter till a seed 


SPONTANEOUS GENEFATION. 27 


has been deposited. The question again comes up, 
Where, when, and whence did we get the first seed 
or living creature producing seed after its kind? 
When they show us this, I engage, if they do it 
while I am alive, to point out some nice adapta- 
tions in the production of this before unknown 
phenomenon. 

I am aware that Dr. Bastian has, within the last 
year, laid before the Royal Society of London a 
set of experiments, which seem to yield a different 
result, and to prove that living beings may and do 
arise, as he expresses it, de novo.* Hitherto it has 
been believed that 100° Centigrade would destroy all 
organic germs. But he says he “has found organ- 
isms in organic fluids, either acid or alkaline, which, 
whilst enclosed within hermetically sealed and air- 
less flasks, had been submitted not only to such a 
temperature, but even to one varying 146° C. and 
153° C. for four hours.” I find that Professor Huxley 
has no faith in the accuracy of these experiments. 
“I believe that the organisms which he has got out 
of his tubes are exactly those which he has put into 
them. I believe that he has used impure materials, 
and that what he imagines to have been the gradual 
development of life and organization in his solutions 
is the very simple result of the settling together of 
the solid impurities, which he was not sufficiently 
careful to see, in their scattered condition, when the 
solutions were made.” But supposing these experi- 
ments to have been performed with unimpeachable 


* See Nature, July, 1870. 


28 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 


accuracy, what has he established by them? Not 
that animated beings can be produced without seeds, 
but merely that certain seeds can bear exposure to a 
higher temperature than they have hitherto been sup- 
posed to be capable of standing. Professor Huxley 
says that “even if the results of the experiments are 
trustworthy, it by no means follows that there has 
been life without a germ. ‘The resistance of living 
matter to heat is known to vary within considerable 
limits, and to depend to some extent upon the chem- 
ical and physical qualities of the surrounding me- 
dium. [But if, in the present state of science, the 
alternative is offered us, either germs can stand a 
greater heat than has been supposed, or the mole- 
cules of dead matter, for no valid or intelligible 
reason that is assigned, are liable to rearrange them- 
selves into living bodies, exactly such as can be 
demonstrated to be frequently produced in another 
way, I cannot understand how choice can be, even 
for a moment, doubtful.” He sums up: “The evi- 
dence direct and indirect in favor of Biogenesis 
[that all life comes from life] must, I think, be 
admitted to be of great weight.” After making this 
statement so frankly, he thinks he may indulge in a 
speculation for which he admits he has no proof, 
and the reasoning involved in which is as illogical 
as Dr. Bastian’s experiments are unscientific: “I 
think it would be the height of presumption for any 
man to say that the conditions, under which matter 
assumes the properties we call ‘vital,’ may not some 
day be artificially brought together. All that I feel 


PLANTS. 29 


justified in affirming is, that I see no reason for 
believing that the feat has been performed yet.” 
But then, “If it were given me to look beyond the 
abyss of geologically recorded time to the still more 
remote period when the earth was passing through 
physical and chemical conditions, which it can no 
more see again than a man may recall his infancy, 
I should expect to be a witness of the evolution 
of living protoplasm from not living matter,” he 
adds, “under forms of great simplicity.” I suspect 
that he has an idea that his favorite protoplasm may 
be there, and gendering life there. “But I beg you 
to recollect that I have no right to call my opinion 
any thing but an act of philosophic faith.” May it 
not be true of this faith, what Mr. Huxley would 
allow to be true of some religious faiths, that the 
wish is father to the thought, and that we are in- 
clined to believe what we wish to be true? It may 
be that in some way, at present inexplicable, lower 
life did then appear; but over against this faith I 
set the one which I cherish, on the ground of the 
whole analogy of nature, that if that way could be 
explicated we should certainly find there, as we find 
everywhere, traces of a purpose. But I stand on 
firmer ground when I maintain that, when known 
facts are against us, it is utterly unscientific to appeal 
to what is and must ever be unknown. 

We have now protoplasm as the food, and cells to 
feed upon them, and a germ cell: but we have not, 
after all, the organized plant or animal; we have not 
the rose, or the lily, or the oak; we have not even 


30 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 


the lichen or the zodphyte. We have merely the 
stone and mortar necessary to the erection of the 
structure. In addition, there must needs be some 
music, like that which brought together the stones 
of ancient Thebes, to co-ordinate the materials of 
which the universe is composed ; or, as more reason- 
able, there must be a builder, who is also an archi- 
tect, so to arrange them that they may be turned 
into the form of the pine, the oak, the eagle, or the 
lion, or that goodly house in which we dwell, and 
which is “so fearfully and wonderfully made.” 

Let us suppose that, by constant accretion of 
powers, we have now the plant: the question is 
started, How has this risen to the animal? “ Not- 
withstanding,” says Professor Huxley, “all the 
fundamental resemblances which exist between the 
powers of the protoplasm in plants and animals, 
they present a striking difference in the fact that 
plants can manufacture fresh protoplasm out of 
mineral compounds, whereas animals are obliged 
to procure it ready made, and hence in the long 
run depend on plants. . Upon what conditions [ that 
convenient word comes in once more] this difference 
in the powers of the two great divisions of the world 
of life depends, nothing is at present known.” 
Whether he knows it or not, there must be some 
cause, or, if he prefers, “condition,” of the plant 

Jing turned into the animal. 

And animals — except, it may be, a few transi- 
tonal forms at the base of the scale — have Sensa- 
‘yn. Whence this sensation, so different from the 


SENSATION. 31 


properties of matter, — this sensation not found in 
unorganized matter, not even in the plant, and not 
manifested till the animal appears? Was it in the 
original matter, —4in the incandescent matter out 
of which our earth was formed? One trembles at 
the very thought; as, in such scorching heat, the 
animal must have been in a state of excruciating 
and intolerable anguish, — we can conceive, seek 
ing extinction, and incapable of finding it. And if 
the sensation came in at a later date, I ask, Whence? 
There is surely no power in nature capable of gen 
erating sensation out of particles of matter not them- 
selves capable of sensation? | 
Since the immediately preceding thoughts were 
written, I find Professor Tyndall following some- 
what the same train, in a paper read at the late 
meeting of the British Association, but avoiding the 
legitimate conclusion in a very illegitimate way. 
“The gist of our present inquiry regarding the 
introduction of life is this: Does it belong to what 
we call matter? or is it an independent principle 
inserted into matter at some suitable epoch, — say, 
when the physical conditions became such as to 
permit of the development of lifer” “There are 
the strongest grounds for believing that, during a 
certain period of its history, the earth was not, nor _ 
was it fit to be, the theatre of life. Whether this 
was ever a nebulous period, or merely a molten 
period, does not much matter; and if we resort to 
the nebulous condition, it is because the probabilities 
are really on its side. Our question is this: Did 


23 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 


creative energy pause until the nebulous matter had 
condensed? until the earth had been detached? 
until the solar fire had so far withdrawn from the 
earth’s vicinity as to permit a crust to gather round 
the planet? Did it wait until the air was isolated? 
until the seas were formed? until evaporation, con- 
densation, and the descent of rain had begun? until 
the sun’s rays had become so tempered by distance 
and by waste as to be chemically fit for the decom- 
positions necessary to vegetable life? Having 
waited through those eons until the proper condi- 
tions had set in, did it send the fiat forth, ‘ Let life 
be’? These questions define a hypothesis, not 
without its difficulties, but the dignity of which was 
demonstrated by the nobleness of the men whom it 
sustained. However the convictions of individuals 
here and there may be influenced, the process must 
be slow which commends the hypothesis of natural 
evolution to the public mind. For what are the 
core and essence of this hypothesis? Strip itnaked, 
and you stand face to face with the notion that not 
alone the more ignoble forms of animalcular or 
animal life, not alone the nobler forms of the 
horse and lion, not alone the exquisite and wonder- 
ful mechanism of the human body, but that the 
human mind itself — emotion, intellect, will, and all 
these phenomena— were once latent in a fiery cloud. 
Surely the mere statement of such a notion is more 
than a refutation.” “I do not think that any holder 
of the evolution hypothesis would say that I over- 
state or overstrain it in any way. I merely strip it 


WAS LIFE IN THE STAR DUST. 33 


of all vagueness, and bring it before you, unclothed 
and unvarnished, the notions by which it must 
stand or fall. Surely these notions represent an 
absurdity too monstrous to be entertained by any 
sane mind.” ‘The difficulty in the way of carrying 
out the hypothesis, that all things — mind and body 
and all their properties— are derived by develop- 
ment from star dust is powerfully put, and should 
lay an arrest on those who speak so dogmatically 
of the possibility of accounting for all things by 
natural law. After having made this strong and 
apparently satisfactory statement, he tries to lessen 
the effect of it, by hinting that the difficulties may 
be lessened, if not removed, by falling back upon a 
philosophic law, —that of Relativity, which has 
been adopted by the school to which he belongs ; 
and by hinting that the perplexities may arise from 
erroneous traditional views about mind and matter.* 
It will be necessary thoroughly to examine that 


* “Why are these notions absurd? and why should sanity 
reject them? The law of relativity, which plays so important a 
part in modern philosophy, may find its application here. These 
evolution notions are absurd, monstrous, and fit only for the 
intellectual gibbet, in relation to the ideas concerning matter 
which were drilled into us when young. Spirit and matter have 
ever been presented to us in the rudest contrast; the one as all 
noble, the other as all vile. But is this correct?” Speaking of 
certain supposed enlightened minds, with which he evidently 
concurs: ‘*‘ They have as little fellowship with the atheist who 
says there is no God, as with the theist who professes to know 
the mind of God.” This language points to some seemingly 
very profound truth, which it will be necessary to examine, 
when it will be found to look so large because of the mist in 
which we see it. 


o* 


34 | NATURAL THEOLOGY. 


general doctrine, and the application of it to mind 
and body, which are alleged to be one and the 
same; so that, in certain conditions, mind might 
come out of matter. This will be undertaken in 
the second series of these Lectures. But, before 
doing this, we must take up this whole subject of 
Development, and the Origin of Species, and the 
Law of Natural Selection, in their relation to the 
lower animals, to man, and to human history. I 
am satisfied if in this Lecture I have succeeded in 
showing that the argument from design is not 
undermined by modern discoveries ; and that, 
through the process by which the universe has 
reached its present condition, there runs an evi- 
dence of pre-arrangement, skill, and purpose, — 
quite as much so as in the formation of threads into 
a web in the loom; as in the types taking their 
proper places so as to print a volume; as in the 
dispositions of the soldiers in the campaigns of Han- 
nibal, of Washington, or of Moltke. 


if. 


NATJRAL SELECTION. — ORIGIN OF MAN. — HISTORICAL 
DEVELOPMENT. — CHRIST AND THE MORAL POWER. 


| ke these Lectures, I am considering the argument 

from design in its application to the subjects dis- 
cussed in modern science. In the last lecture, I have 
shown that we have numerous examples of adapta- 
tion and purpose in the production of plants and 
animals. We have seen that no known natural 
power can produce organized out of unorganized 
matter, can produce protoplasm out of protein, can 
generate a cell without a parent cell, or a plant or 
an animal without a seed or germ, or a sentient 
animal from insentient matter. . But the question 
has often occurred to me, Is religion essentially 
bound up with the settlement, one way or other, of 
these scientific questions? 

Suppose it proven that there is such a thing as 
spontaneous generation: would religion thereby be 
overthrown, either in its evidences, its doctrines, 
or its precepts? I have doubts if it would. The 
great body of thinkers in ancient times — even those 
most inclined to theism— seem to have believed 
that lower creatures sprang out of the dust of the 


30 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 


earth, without the need of a previous germ. Some 
of the profoundest theologians and ablest defend- 
ers of religion in the early church were believers 
in the doctrine of spontaneous generation, — which 
may be consistently held in modern times by believers 
in natural and revealed religion. The establishment 
of the need of a germ, in order to the production of 
life, does not carry us back three centuries. There 
is really no ground for the fears of the timid, on the 
one hand, nor, on the other hand, for the arrogant 
expectation of the atheist, that he will thereby be 
able to drive God from his works. Spontaneous 
generation is not to be understood as a generation 
out of nothing, an event without a cause, an affair 
of caprice or chance. It is a production out of pre- 
existing materials by means of powers in the mate- 
rials, — powers very much unknown, working only 
in certain circumstances, and requiring, in order to 
their operation, favorable conditions, assorted (so all 
religious people think) by Divine wisdom. Spon- 
taneous generation, supposing it to exist, cannot be 
a simple, it must be a very complex process; in- 
volving properties possessed by matter, and a con- 
course of circumstances working to the production 
of an intended end. 

Plants and animals (let me suppose) are now 
formed out of germs, or, if you can show it to be 
so, out of wisely endowed and carefully prepared 
matter. But, How are they propagated? is the next 
question. By special acts of creation? or by devel- 
opment? I do not know that religion, natural or 


DEVELOPMENT. YY) 


revealed, has any interest in holding by any partic- 
ular view on this subject, any more than it has in 
maintaining any special theory as to the formation 
of strata of stone on the earth’s surface. It is now 
admitted that Christians may hold, in perfect con- 
sistency with religion and Genesis, that certain 
layers of rock were formed, not at once by a fiat 
of God, but mediately by water and fire as the 
agents of God. And are they not at liberty to hold, 
always if evidence be produced, that higher plants 
have been developed from lower, and higher brutes 
from lower, according to certain laws of descent, 
known or unknown, working in favorable circum- 
stances? There is nothing irreligious in the idea 
of development, properly understood. We have 
constant experience of development, — of the de- 
velopment of individual plants and animals from 
parent plants and animals. And why, if proof be 
produced, should we not be allowed to believe in 
the development of a new species from the crossing 
of two species in favorable circumstances? 
Development, if we only carefully inquire into its 
nature, will not be seen to be so simple an opera- 
tion as some imagine. ‘The development of an in- 
dividual plant or animal from its parentage is a very 
complex process, implying an immense body of 
agencies, mechanical, chemical, probably electric 
and magnetic: some would say that it requires, in 
addition, an independent vital power. But, put the 
supposition that no distinct vital power is required, 
—that a certain coincidence of chemical and me- 


38 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 


chanical and electric agencies will accomplish the 
whole, —the question would only be started, Whence 
this combination and co-agency of these diverse 
forces to accomplish a specific end? What is true 
of the development of individuals would also hold 
good of the development of species, if there be such 
a thing in nature. If man could construct, out of 
simple mechanical powers, not only a watch telling 
the hour, but a watch which should produce other 
watches telling the hour through all time, our ad- 
miration of the skill of the artist would not be 
diminished. Insuch an instrument, were it possible 
or conceivable, the maker would require to secure 
a double end, — not only that the watch would an- 
nounce the time, but that there should be a second 
watch and a third watch, on indefinitely, all accom- 
plishing the same purpose. Our wonder would be 
increased, if the watches thus produced not only 
produced other watches, but, as they consorted 
in favorable circumstances, better and yet better 
watches. So, in vegetable and animal develop- 
ment, there must be adaptation upon adaptation: 
adaptation of the individual to its mate; adaptation 
in the growth of the young when yet connected 
with the parent; adaptation of the birth to external 
circumstances in the air, food, and clothing supplied 
for it; adaptation in the instincts of animals, — for 
example, in the love of offspring, and in the capacity 
of the creature to grow and strengthen, and, it may 
be, to produce a progeny better than itself. 

The question as to whether there is or is not a 


VITAL PRINCIPLE. 39 


separate vital principle, and whether there may not 
be a new species developed out of the old, is a 
question for science to settle. And, whichever way 
it is settled, there is room for irreligion —I am sorry 
to say; but there is room also for religion. ‘The 
assertion that there is a vital principle, capable of 
originating, unfolding, and perfecting all that is in 
the organism, may be quite as irreligious as the 
denial of a separate vital potency. Proceeding on 
the existence of a vital force, which they suppose, 
pantheistically or atheistically, to inhere in nature, 
there are some who imagine that they have thereby 
explained every thing connected with the develop- 
ment and growth of vegetable and animal organ- 
isms. Mr. Huxley can work such wonders by 
protoplasm, only by imparting to it a life-power 
such as is ascribed to nature generally by pan- 
theists. I am inclined, on the evidence of science, 
to believe in a vital power, as different from the 
chemical as the chemieal is from the mechanical ; 
but I do not believe in an independent power called 
the vegetable or animal life, capable of producing 
all the beautiful forms and adaptations which we 
admire in the living creatures. It can be shown, 
whether we do or do not call in a vital principle, 
that there is need of a whole series of nice arrange- 
ments of part and power before the organism can 
fulfil its functions, and yield seed after its kind or 
better than its kind. It is a question to be decided 
by naturalists, and not by theologians; who, so 
far as I see, have no authority from the Word of 


40 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 


God to say that every species of tiny moths has 
been created independent of all species of moths 
which have gone before. The natural tendency of 
theologians will be conservative. I goa step farther, 
and say that it ought to be conservative. It is not for 
them to run eagerly after every new theory which 
may be propounded, and live its ephemeral day; 
and to make religion to lean upon it, only to suffer 
a fall and a humiliation when it breaks down. 
“ He that believeth will not make haste.” Religion 
can afford to wait till the point is established or dis- 
established. When a law has been established so 
as to stand the tests of scientific induction, then 
theologians may reverently use it, in expounding 
the traces of design discoverable in the universe. 

It is for naturalists to determine the points which 
have been started by Mr. Darwin. The law with 
which his name is identified is that of Natural 
Selection. He has copiously illustrated that law, 
but has not defined it very clearly. ‘The name, 
_ Natural Selection, might lead us to imagine that, 
somehow or other, the plant or animal has a choice 
in the matter, or at least some power to improve 
itself or its position. A plant is liable to be eaten 
by cattle, and might be the better of spines; and 
as it needs them, so the need provides them, and 
they go down to posterity. An animal would be 
profited by claws to seize its prey; and the wish 
calls forth rudimentary claws, which go down with 
improvements from generation to generation. But 
no such idea is meant to be conveyed by Darwin. 


NATURAL SELECTION. 41 


The law is simply, that, where a plant happens to 
get a thorn, or a beast a claw, it is more likely to 
live while others perish, and that it transmits its 
endowment to posterity. It means that, in the 
struggle for existence, the stronger, or the better 
adapted to its position, will prevail. Even this pre- 
supposes that there are capacities in nature, — the 
capacity of producing spines and claws in certain 
circumstances. But there is more than this implied : 
it is implied that strength, or any useful peculiarity, 
once acquired, will become hereditary. ‘This last 
is a very complex law, or rather process, the pre- 
cise elements of which have not been unfolded. 
Mr. Darwin says that science has hitherto thrown 
no light on the nature of heredity. “The laws 
governing inheritance are quite unknown: no one 
can say why the same peculiarity in different indi- 
viduals of the same species, and in individuals of 
different species, is sometimes inherited and some- 
times not so; why it often reverts, in certain char- 
acters, to its grandfather or grandmother, or other 
much more remote ancestor; why a peculiarity is 
often transmitted from one sex to both sexes, or to 
one sex alone, more commonly, but not exclusively, 
to the like sex.” * Depend upon it, when the pro- 
cess is explored, there will be found an immense 
number and variety of adaptations to secure that the 
peculiarity of the individual, found to be useful, will 
not perish with the individual, but go down to future 
ages. 
* Origin of Species, chap. i. 


42 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 


As long as such men as Agassiz in this country, 
and Milne Edwards and his school in France, 
oppose the theory of Darwin, not only by their 
authority, but by their facts and arguments, Dar- 
Winism cannot be regarded as settled. Sir William 
Thomson, in a set of papers-in the “ North British 
Review” and elsewhere, — papers of which I do 
not say that they will never be answered, but of 
which I affirm that they have not hitherto been 
answered, — shows that the derivation of all ani- 
mated beings from one original germ cannot be 
reconciled with astronomy ; which declares that the 
earth was formed at a comparatively late date, 
whereas the formation of all living creatures by 
natural selection requires indefinite ages. My 
opinion on such a subject is of no scientific value ; 
but I am inclined to think that the theory contains a 
large body of important truths, which we see illus- 
trated in every department of organic nature; but 
that it does not contain the whole truth, and that it 
overlooks more than it perceives. Whence this 
power which raises the plant, which raises the ani- 
mal, from age to age? Whence, for example, the 
sensation in animals, their liability to pleasure and 
pain? Whence the instincts of animals? — of the 
spider, the bee, the horse, the dog, the elephant? 
Natural selection might modify them, supposing 
them to exist; but the question is, How came they 
to exist? Were they, at least as germs, in the origi- 
nal star dust? Or have they been added? Or, if 
added, by natural law? or how? ‘To these questions 








GENESIS AND GEOLOGY. 43 


science can give no answer, and should not pretend to 
be able to give an answer. When it talks, with such 
seeming profundity and wisdom, of “conditions,” let 
it not imagine that it is giving an explanation, when 
the conditions are unknown, — the conditions, for 
example, of the production of the affection of the 
mother bird or beast for its offspring. But, on this 
subject, religion can say as little, except that it 
should trace all things up to God; not being able, 
however, to determine whether he has been acting 
by an immediate fiat, or, as he usually does, by 
secondary causes. 

On one point, however, religion has a title to 
speak out. Ido not know that she has any special 
charge given her of the lower animals, except to 
see that they are protected and kindly treated. But 
religion is addressed to man, and she has to see 
that man’s nature is not degraded and reduced to 
the same level as that of the brutes. There has 
been a special revelation made as to the origin 
and destiny of man; and this we must uphold and 
defend. 

There is, account for it as we may, a general 
correspondence between the record in the Bible and 
the record in stone. My friend Hugh Miller may 
not have been able to point out an identity in every 
minute particular; but he has certainly established 
a general congruity. ‘There isan order and there is 
a progression very much the same in both. In both 
there is light before the sun appears. In Genesis, 
the fiat goes forth, “Let there be light, and there 


44 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 


was light” the first day, and the sun comes forth 
only the fourth, — in accordance with science, which 
tells us that the earth was thrown off ages before 
the sun had become condensed into the centre of 
the planetary system. In both, the inanimate comes 
before the animate; in both, the grass and herb 
and tree, before the animal; in both, fishes and 
fowls, before creeping things and cattle. In both, 
we have, as the last of the train, man standing up- 
right, and facing the sky; made of the dust of the 
ground, and yet filled with the inspiration of God. 
As both agree in the history of the past, so both 
agree as to the future of the world. The Scrip- 
tures point, not obscurely, to a day of dissolution. 
2 Pet. ii. 5: “ This they willingly are ignorant of, 
that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and 
the earth standing out of the water and in the water : 
whereby the world that then was, being overflowed 
with water, perished. But the heavens and the earth 
which are now, by the same word are kept in store, 
reserved unto fire against the day of judgment.” 
All men of science are agreed that, according to 
the laws now in operation, there is in our system a 
wasting of energy in the shape of heat, which must, 
in an indefinite time, bring our cosmos to a state of 
chillness and death; to be followed, some think, by 
an accumulation of heat and a conflagration, which 
will reduce all things to star dust; out of which, by 
the agglomeration of matter, new worlds will arise. 
It may be rash in any one to imagine that he sees 
so far into the future, in which new powers may 


ORIGIN OF MAN. 45 


appear, as they have certainly done in the past; 
but this, it can be demonstrated, is and must be the 
issue, according to the powers now working. Such 
is the correspondence between science and Scrip- 
ture. You will find no such correspondence be- 
tween modern discovery and any work of heathen 
mythology, eastern or western. Prima_facze, there 
must be a great truth in that opening chapter of 
Genesis, which has anticipated geology by three 
thousand years. 

Mr. Darwin has not given to the world his views 
as to the origin of man.* Mr. Wallace, who, con- 
temporaneously with Darwin, discovered the law 
of Natural Selection (the publication of a paper by 
him called forth Darwin’s book), has declared, in a 
work recently published,{ that there are insuperable 
difficulties in applying that law to the derivation of 
the human race. He declares boldly, “I do not 
consider that all nature can be explained on the 
principles of which I am so ardent an advocate; ” 
and he discovers evidence of an “unknown higher 
law, beyond and independent of all those laws of 
which we have any knowledge.” He conducts an 
argument to show “the insufficiency of Natural 
Selection to account for the development of man.” 
There are gaps between the brute and man which 


* This was true when this Lecture was delivered. When it is 
going through the press, ‘‘ The Descent of Man,” Vol. I., has 
appeared in America. If Vol. II. appears before this volume is 
issued, I may notice the whole work in the Appendix. 

~ Wallace on Natural Selection. X. 


46 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 


cannot be filled up. “The brain of the lowest 
savages, and, as far as we yet know, of the pre- 
historic races, is little inferior in size to that of the 
highest types of man, and immensely superior to 
that of the higher animals.” “The collections of Dr. 
J. B. Davis and Dr. Morton give the following as the 
average internal capacity of the cranium in the chief 
races: Teutonic family, ninety-four cubic inches , 
Esquimaux, ninety-one cubic inches; Negroes, 
eighty-five cubic inches; Australians and Tas- 
manians, eighty-two cubic inches; Bushmen, 
seventy-seven cubic inches. ‘These last numbers, 
however, are deduced from comparatively few 
specimens, and may be below the average; just as 
a small number of Finns and Cossacks give ninety- 
eight cubic inches, or considerably more than that of 
the German races. It is evident, therefore, that the 
absolute bulk of the brain is not necessarily much 
less in savage than in civilized man; for Esquimaux 
skulls are known with a capacity of one hundred 
and thirteen inches, or hardly less. than the largest 
among Europeans. But, what is still more extra- 
ordinary, the few remains yet known of prehistoric 
man do not indicate any material diminution in the 
size of the brain case. A Swiss skull of the stone 
age, found in the lake dwelling of Meilen, corre- 
sponded exactly to that of a Swiss youth of the 
present day. The celebrated Neanderthal skull 
had a larger circumference than the average; and 
its capacity, indicating actual mass of brain, is 
estimated to have been not less than seventy-five 





ORIGIN OF MAN. 49 


‘ 


cubic inches, or nearly the average of existing 
Australian crania. The Engis skull, perhaps the 
oldest known, and which, according to Sir John 
Lubbock, ‘there seems no doubt was really con- 
temporary with the mammoth and the cave bear,’ 
is yet, according to Professor Huxley, ‘a fair 
average skull, which might have belonged to a 
philosopher, or might have contained the thought- 
less brains of a savage.’” Let us turn now to the 
brain of animals. “The adult male orang-utan is 
quite as bulky as a small-sized man, while the gorilla 
is considerably above the average size of man, as 
estimated by bulk and weight: yet the former has a 
brain of only twenty-eight cubic inches; the latter, 
one of thirty, or, in the largest specimen yet known, 
of thirty-four and a half cubic inches. We have 
seen that the average cranial capacity of the lowest 
savages is probably not less than five-sixths of that 
of the highest civilized races, while the brain of the 
anthropoid apes scarcely amounts to one-third of 
that of man, in both cases taking the average; or 
the proportions may be more clearly represented by 
the following figures : anthropoid apes, ten ; savages, 
twenty-six ; civilized man, thirty-two.” There is no 
evidence, then, of a gradual rise, by natural law, 
from the brute to the lowest form of man. Mr. 
Wallace emphatically urges that savages have a 
brain capacity not required by their wants, and 
which could not have been produced by their wants 
in the struggle of life. 

He dwells on some other capacities, which he says 


48 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 


cannot be accounted for by the theory. “The soft, 
naked, sensitive skin of man, entirely free from that 
hairy covering which is so universal among other 
mammalia, cannot be explained on the theory of 
natural selection. The habits of savages show that 
they feel the want of this covering, which is most 
completely absent in man exactly where it is thick- 
est on other animals. We have no reason whatever 
to believe that it could have been hurtful, or even 
useless, to primitive man; and, under these circum- 
stances, its complete abolition, shown by its never 
_ reverting in mixed breeds, is a demonstration of the 
agency of some other power than the law of the 
survival of the fittest, in the development of man 
from the lower animals. Other characters show 
difficulties of a similar kind, though not perhaps in 
an equal degree. ‘The structure of the human foot’ 
and hand seem unnecessarily perfect for the needs 
of savage man, in whom they are as completely and 
as humanly developed as in the highest races. The 
structure of the human larynx, giving the power of 
speech and of producing musical sounds, and espe- 
cially its extreme development in the female sex, 
are shown to be beyond the needs of savages, and 
from their known habits impossible to have been 
acquired either by sexual selection or by survival 
of the fittest.” ‘These are difficulties which present 
themselves to Mr. Wallace as a naturalist. He sees 
also those which arise from his possession of men- 
tal faculties which have no relation to his fellow- 
men or to his material progress, to his possession of 





ORIGIN OF MAN. 49 


consciousness, his power of conceiving eternity and 
infinity, and the sense of right and wrong which 
he finds in uncivilized tribes. After quoting Mr. 
Huxley, who says that “ our thoughts are the expres- 
sion of molecular changes in that matter of life 
which is the source of our other vital phenomena,” 
Mr. Wallace remarks that he has not been able to 
find the clew by which Mr. Huxley “passes from 
those vital phenomena which consist only, in their 
last analysis, of movements of particles of matter, 
to those other phenomena which we term thought, 
sensation, or consciousness.” 

Science, it is acknowledged, can produce no direct 
evidence of man being derived from the brute. The 
argument against the doctrine must be drawn mainly 
from his possession of qualities not found in the 
lower animals. As, most obvious of all, we have 
organs of speech, and, as more important, the power: 
of using them intelligently.* We have the faculty 
of reaching abstract and general truth, a faculty 
which the brute creatures do not possess; when 
they seem to have it, it arises, as can be shown, 
merely from the association of ideas. Then there 
is the capacity of distinguishing between good and 
evil, and that of free will to choose the good and 


* «¢ Although it has been at various times stated that certain 
savage tribes are entirely without language, none of these 
accounts appear to be well authenticated, and they are a priori 
extremely improbable. At any rate, even the lowest races of 
which we have any satisfactory account possess a language, 
. imperfect though it may be, and eked out to a great extent by 
signs.” — Lubbock, Origin of Civilization ; VIII. 

3 


50 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 


avoid the evil. Crowning them all, is man’s power 
to rise to a knowledge of God, to the contem- 
plation of his perfections, and to acts of worship. 
These higher attributes of humanity will fall under 
our consideration, when we come to look at the 
mind. Science can say nothing as to how all these 
qualities came to be superinduced. Were they in 
the star dust when it was incandescent? or did they 
appear when it began to cool? If so, in what state? 
If not so, when and where and how did they come 
in? Science, physiological or paleontological, can 
throw no light on this subject, and should not decide 
or dogmatize when it has no data to proceed on. 
The Book of Genesis, which has so anticipated 
geology in the account which it has given of the 
successive appearance of plants and animals, has 
here gone beyond science, and given an account 
against which science has and can have nothing to 
advance. 

That account is brief, simple, general, avoiding 
minute and circumstantial details: Gen. 11. 7, “And 
the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, 
and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life;” a 
statement implying first the connection of man with 
the earth, — with its dust, its flesh, or animal nature, 
—and at the same time connecting him with heaven 
by an inspiration, or breath of the Almighty. Such 
is the very summary account of the physical crea- 
tion, of the formation of the dust, the flesh, the 
bodily frame. Does it say how it was done, by 
natural or supernatural law, by means or without 








TRACES OF PROGRESSION. 51 


means? Scripture enlarges and dwells only on the 
higher endowment, the truly human, as distinguished 
from the animal endowment; as Gen. i. 26, “And 
God said, Let us make man in our image, after our 
likeness: and let him have dominion ovef the fish 
of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over 
the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every 
creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So 
God created man in his own image, in the image of 
God created he him.” All this is in accordance with 
clearly established fact. Man has affinities with the 
lower animals: this should not be denied. Like 
them he is formed out of dust and returns to dust. 
But at the same time he has qualities which assimi 
late him to God, — a power of looking back into the 
past and anticipating the future, of tracing effects to 
causes and anticipating effects from causes, of appre- 
ciating the fair and the good, and a free choice to 
act on his conviction. And is there not need of 
Divine breath to produce all this, to make this dust 
a living soul? Is there not need of a Divine decree 
to make his soul like unto God in knowledge, right- 
eousness, and true holiness? In doing all this, God 
is only carrying out and completing the plan shad- 
owed forth in the geological ages. ‘These two lect- 
ures are only an exposition of what the Apostle says: 
1 Cor. xv. 46, “Howbeit, that was not first which 
is spiritual (avevyerimor), but that which is natural 
(woyxov) ; and afterward that which is spiritual.” 
And so there appear farther evidences of pro- 
gression, and of a progressive progression. ‘The 


52 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 


powers of nature are made by a power above them, 
to bring forth higher products characterized by wis- 
dom, by skill, and by taste. Your believer in mere 
Natural Law and Natural Selection has seen only 
half the truth, or rather he has not seen half the 
truth. Like one of those insects which he may 
have been microscopically examining, he has seen 
only the smallest objects. Mole-like, he has been 
burrowing a dark and confined tunnel through the 
underground clay, instead of walking upright like 
a man, and looking around him on the extended 
earth, and up into the expanse of heaven. He has 
used the microscope and seen the infinitely little ; 
but he refuses to look through the telescope, which 
shows him how the littles are formed into structures 
of infinite greatness and grandeur. All, no doubt, 
proceeds from natural laws; but these are made to 
work out typical forms, geometrically correct and 
eesthetically beautiful. The cold winter gives us 
frost-work, and the warm summer yields us flowers ; 
and contemporaneously there appear intellect and 
taste to measure and appreciate it. The blind forces 
are made by One who has eyes to evolve ideas, 
patterns, exemplars, which perceiving minds are 
constructed to behold and admire. Finally, above 
the physical, above the intellectual even, there rises 
the moral, like stars out of the star dust, or rather 
like stars rising out of these other stars, only brighter, 
purer, and more enduring. At the point to which 
we have come, a new progression is opening to us 
in an endless vista. 


THE MORAL POWER. 53 


Darwin has caught an important fact, when he 
says that there is a principle of Natural Selection in 
nature: the strong live and multiply and increase; 
while the weak die, give way, and disappear. This 
is certainly a law of the plants and of the lower 
animals. It looks in the earlier periods of human 
history as if this law were still the ruling one, as 
if bodily strength and brute force were to subdue 
the weak and hold them in subjection. The first 
empires —the Egyptian, the Assyrian, the Baby- 
lonian, the Persian— were very much founded on 
this principle. And is this to go on for ever, the 
powerful tyrannizing over the feeble, men making 
women do all the menial work, and the great body 
of the people, even in such civilized countries as 
Greece and Rome, slaves to the few? In the 
progression of events, there appear clear proofs 
that the old law is to give way before a higher 
to which it is subordinated. ‘There are indications 
that intelligence is to prevail over unreasoning 
force. Nations of the highest mental power and 
cultivation, such as the Greeks and Romans, begin 
to take the lead, and rule by forethought, by coun- 
sel, by firm government. 

As we advance, we see a new, a still more impor- 
tant law emerging, and urging its claim not only to 
a place, but a supreme place, declaring that right is 
above might, that moral good is higher even than 
intellectual strength. A people with high intelli- 
gence may become pleasure-loving, sensual, as the 
Greeks did in their great commercial cities; may 


54 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 


become selfish, cruel, dissolute, as the Romans did 
in the decline of their empire, — and a hardier and a 
more moral race comes in like a fresh, cool breeze 
to fill up the heated and relaxing atmosphere. Not 
that the law of the prevalence of strength is abso- 
lutely set aside, but it is subordinated to a higher 
law, or rather higher laws, which limit and restrain 
it, and may be made to direct and to elevate it. The 
intellectual rises above the physical, and asserts its 
right to govern it, even as the soul claims to rule 
over the body. But there is more: the moral rises 
above the intellectual, and claims that the under- 
standing should be obedient to it, even as the 
conscience, which is the law in the heart, declares 
that it should rule over the head, and over the 
whole man. Nay, the very moral ideas and senti- 
ments make progress by purification and refine- 
ment: an earthly morality like that of Jacob is made 
to flame into the love of John; and the rigid prohi- 
bitions of the commandments, written on stone, be- 
come the blessings of the discourses of Jesus, meant 
to be written on the fleshly tables of the heart. 

The Law of Natural Selection — that, in the exu- 
berance of seeds and organisms and species, in early 
nature the stronger should prevail—is in itself a 
beneficent one. “All changes of form or structure, 
all increase in the size of an organ or its complex- 
ity, all greater specialization or physiological divis- 
ion of labor, can only be brought about, inasmuch 
as it is for the good of the being so modified.”* It 


* Wallace on Natural Selection. 


eo ee 


THE MORAL POWER. 55 


allows the weak, after enjoying their brief time of 
existence, to die and disappear; while the vigorous 
leave behind a still stronger progeny to rise to a 
fuller development and intenser enjoyments. But 
there are stringent limits set to this law. It is, after 
all, the law of the period of the unconscious plant 
and irrational brute. It comes to be subordinated 
to a higher, and this to a still higher. Intellect 
comes later; but, like the more recent geological 
formations, it mounts the highest, and overlies and 
overlooks all the rest. Thought gains, and it retains, 
the highest positions; the giants disappear, and the 
civilized peoples take their place; the Canaanites, 
with their chariots of iron, are conquered by men 
who carry with them a higher mission; the walls 
of Jericho fall down before the blowing of trumpets 
sounding truth to all people. ‘The forests are cut 
down to let the fields yield corn and wheat, and 
barley and vines, and figs and olives; and trees 
are left only for shelter and for lawn ornaments. 
The creatures with stings and claws and fangs— the 
foxes, the wolves, the leopards -— give way before 
sheep and horses and kine. There is still a struggle 
for existence, but the skill which devises means and 
invents instruments prevails over brute force and 
fierceness. And this power of understanding is 
destined to be sublimed into something nobler and 
more ethereal. Above the dead earth and agitated 
sea there is to rise an atmosphere in which the 
living are to breathe and move and fly. The intel- 
lectual era seems to culminate in Greece in the days 


50 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 


of Pericles, when free thought and art and literature 
have reached their zenith. But in that very age, a 
new and a vastly greater power comes into view. 
Socrates is defeated, and yet Socrates conquers. 
He drinks the hemlock, and dies; but it is in the 
hope of an immortality. His body is burned; but 
the flame by which this was effected, a new corre- 
lated force, is never to be extinguished. His perse- 
cutors are forgotten, or remembered only to be 
execrated; but the moral power of Socrates still 
walks our earth. A new struggle for existence 
has begun. It was exhibited and symbolized at 
Thermopylze, where the power of numbers was 
met and defeated by the heroism of a devoted few. 
It was an anticipation of what was to come. 

But there were better prefigurations of it among 
a people specially called and set apart for the pur- 
pose; in an enslaved race, trained to become the 
depositaries of the truth, and in due time the mis- 
sionaries of the world; in the law delivered first, 
as if to suit the ages of giant strength, amid thunders 
and lightnings and tempest, and the voice of the 
trumpet waxing louder and louder, and then com- 
ing forth from the gentle lips of Jesus; first in the 
strong wind, the earthquake, and the fire, fol- 
lowed by the still, small voice, which is specially 
the voice of God as heard in the later prophets, 
and still more sweetly in the discourses of Him 
who spake as never man spake. In due time the 
types, the bloody sacrifices, the whole _ burnt- 
offerings, culminate in an archetype, in which we 





PLACE OF CHRIST. 87 


see the highest strength coming out of the lowest 
weakness. 

This new struggle, it is so destined, had its grand 
battle-field on Mount Calvary. You may see it all 
acted on the cross which is raised high there, that it 
may draw all eyes towards it. You‘have there the 
writhings, the faintings, the cup of gall, the sponge 
filled with vinegar, the agony closing in death ; and 
you perceive, at the same time, the confidence put 
in him by suffering and loving hearts, —“ Remem- 
ber me when thou comest into thy kingdom” Yes, 
that weakest, most forsaken of men is acknowl- 
edged as a king and as having a kingdom; and his 
answer is, To-day thou shalt be with me in this king- 
dom of paradise. This most defenceless of men, 
who uses no carnal weapons, who refuses to bring 
down fire from heaven to destroy his enemies, 
becomes the greatest conqueror which this world 
has seen, — greater than the Egyptian, the Baby- 
lonian, the Greek, or the Roman, — and subdues 
under him, not the mere bodies of men, but the 
loftiest intellects which have adorned our world, and 
hearts purified and burning with love. He rises 
out of the grave, to become a victor whose triumphs 
know no end. Crucified as a slave by a Roman 
deputy, he conquers the Roman power; and the 
emperor who fought so long and fiercely against 
him has to ‘exclaim with his dying breath, “Thou 
hast conquered me, O Galilean!” By suffering, he 
has accomplished ends which he could never have 
gained by prosperity and success. He has become 

3% 


58 NATURAL THEOLOGY. - 


perfect through suffering, and has secured the 
means of gaining the heart of the sufferer and of 
elevating the fallen: the fallen man who clings to 
him; the fallen woman who bathes his feet with 
her tears, and pours forth the feelings of her heart 
more precious than the ointment from the alabaster 
box; the fallen nations, as seen in the once savage 
tribes of Germany and Britain, who have been 
raised by Christianity; and of exalting the fallen 
race of mankind, who have thereby risen from 
condemnation to. justification, from alienation to 
reconciliation with God. This is a cause for the 
promotion of which, this is a lesson for the teaching 
of which, it was worthy of God to become flesh and 
tabernacle on the earth, and suffer and die. He 
has thereby shown that there is something greater 
in him than his almightiness. I have sometimes 
felt as if God could scarcely be regarded by us as 
thoroughly perfect, unless he were capable of sub- 
mitting to suffering. I have felt at times that, if this 
were denied him, his creatures might reach a per- 
fection which he has not, which he cannot have. I 
believe that the Word becoming flesh and taber- 
nacling on the earth is an essential part of the plan 
which we see developing before our eyes; and it 
seems as if the transaction were placed in the very 
middle of the ages, as the keystone of the bridge 
which connects the two compartments of God’s 
works, — the physical, with its force and its struggle 
for existence, with the moral, with its sufferings and 
its triumphs. In earthly affairs, there may be a 


THE PRESENT STRUGGLE. 69 


greater glory in suffering and sorrow than in pros- 
perity and dazzling splendor: there may, for ex- 
ample, be a greater glory in the soldier’s death than 
in his life; there was a greater glory in Samson’s 
death than in all the achievements of his life. But 
speak not of the glory of the soldier bleeding in 
defence of a nation’s rights; speak not of the glory 
of the patriot toiling and suffering and dying for 
his country’s freedom; speak not of the glory of 
the martyr calm and rejoicing while tied to the 
burning stake: these have no glory because of the 
glory that excelleth,— the glory of Christ’s conde- 
scension and patience and love, in submitting to 
shame, to sorrow, and to death. 

Now this is the era in which our lot is cast. This 
is the struggle in which we are required to take our 
part. It commenced at an early date: “I will put 
enmity between thee and the woman, and between 
thy seed and her seed: it shall bruise thy head, 
and thou shalt bruise his heel.” The serpent is 
seen bruising the heel of the seed of the woman. 
The good have still to suffer, but in their suffering 
they show their goodness. We are in a dispensa- 
tion in which the plant must be bruised before it 
yields its odors, in which the rose must wither be- 
fore it yields its undying perfume. A good cause 
must have its martyrs before it triumphs. John 
Brown has to be put to death before the manacles 
are struck from the slave. _Your Abraham Lin- 
coln is shot in the midst of the shouts of victory. 
“Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of 


60 NATURAL THEOLOGY. < 


wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth 
alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit. 
He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that 
hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life 
eternal.” 

Let us realize that our lot is cast in such a dis- 
pensation. ‘There are strong men, and seemingly 
Wise men, in our day who do not'see it. I have set 
myself all my life against the doctrine taught in the 
works of Thomas Carlyle (or rather the impres- 
sion left by them), and the writings of others who 
ape him, without his strength, and which would lead 
us to worship heroes and deify force. I repudiate 
the principle which underlies and runs through the 
whole of Buckle’s “History of Civilization,” that 
intellect has been, is, and ought to be the grand 
moving power in the world. ‘True, intellect must 
always, in the end, be the main agent or instrument 
in helping forward the advancement of the race; 
but it is only in the sense in which steam is the 
agent in moving the railway cars. In contemplat- 
ing the steam-engine, we rise beyond the steam to 
consider the mind which has constructed and is 
guiding the whole; so, in weighing the causes 
which have imparted progress to humanity, we 
must look beyond the intellectual force to the deeper 
moral power which has awakened it. Has not intel- 
ligence in many countries — as in Switzerland, in 
Prussia, in Holland, in Scotland, in New Eng- 
land, and in other States of the Union — been called 
forth by the Reformation, by the Covenanting and 


DUTY TO SUPPORT THE WEAK. 61 


Puritan faith? and nations which lose that faith 
may find that they have cut down the tree on 
which the fruit grew, on which fruit they can feed 
no longer. 

” Of all acts of cowardice, the meanest is that 
which leads us to abandon a good cause because it 
is weak, and join a bad cause because it is strong. 
The smitten deer is said to be avoided by the herd, — 
it is the instinct of the brute; but in the higher law 
which reigns in the breast of mankind and woman- 
kind, you never saw the smitten son abandoned by 
the mother, who may be seen, instead, standing 
by him at the foot of the cross on which he is sus- 
pended, undeservedly or deservedly. Ido fear that, 
in my past life, I have often been tempted to pay 
obeisance to false gods; but I thank the great God 
that I have always been kept from that prevalent 
form of idolatry — found not only in Persia and in 
the East, but in this Western world — which wor- 
ships the rising sun. I confess that I might have 
been enticed to adore him in his setting splendors ; 
that is, in some of those old grandeurs which have 
had their day, and are now disappearing in a 
soft radiance which they did not possess in their 
zenith. J am sure that there is nothing in my past 
life of which I am entitled to be proud; but if I 
could take credit for any thing, it would be for 
the fact, that,—descended from Covenanting fore- 
fathers, who, not contented with suffering as the 
Puritans did, went on to resist oppression on their 
heather hills, which always look to me as if they had 


62 NATURAL THEOLOG?. 


been dyed with their blood, —I have in the great 
questions of the day, educational and religious, in 
Scotland and in Ireland, cast in my lot with the 
minority, which in due season became the majority ; 
and when I left any cause, it was because it had 
waxed strong, and did not need my poor aid. We 
have to see to it that, in the struggle of life, we 
stand by right, and not by might, being sure that 
in the end the right shall have the might. Should 
we act otherwise, we shall certainly fall under that 
law of degradation, which requires that evil, once 
committed, goes down to the third and fourth gen- 
eration of them that hate him, when God gives 
men up to the consequences of their own iniquity, 
and the curse alights on them: “Curse ye Meroz, 
curse ye bitterly the inhabitants thereof; because 
they came not to the help of the Lord, to the help 
of the Lord against the mighty.” 





Ill. 


LIMITS TO THE LAW OF NATURAL SELECTION. — THIS WORLv 
A SCENE OF STRUGGLE.— APPEARANCE OF SPIRITUAL 
LIFE. — FINAL CAUSE. — NEW LIFE. — UNITY AND 
GROWTH IN THE WORLD.— HIGHER PRODUCTS COMING 
FORTH. — SIGNS OF PROGRESS. 


“| PARSE are clear indications, in the geological 

ages, of a progression from the inanimate up 
to the animate, and from the lower animate to the 
higher. The mind, ever impelled to seek for 
causes, asks how all this is produced. The answer, 
if answer can be had, is to be given by science, and 
not by religion; which simply insists that we trace 
all things up to God, whether acting by immediate 
or by mediate agency. Mr. Darwin would refer it 
all to the somewhat vaguely enunciated principle 
of Natural Selection, or the preservation of the 
creatures best suited to their circumstances, and the 
success of the strong in the struggle of life. That 
this principle is exhibited in nature, and working 
to the advancement of the plants and animals from 
age to age, I have no doubt. We see it operating 
before our eyes every spring, when we find the 
weak plant killed by the frosts of winter, and the 


04 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 


strong surviving and producing a progeny strong 
as itself. But it has not been proven that there is 
no other principle at work. Iam not satisfied that 
this principle has produced life out of dead matter, 
that it has produced sentient beings out of insentient, 
that it has wrought the conscious mind from the 
unconscious body, that it has generated man from 
the brute. There is no positive proof that it has so 
much as produced a new species of animals out of 
old ones. In regard to this latter point, it seems to 
account for some of the phenomena, but leaves 
others unexplained. In particular, there are gaps 
in the geological ages between the species of one 
age and-those of another age, with no intermediate 
species to fill it, as being the descendants of the 
one and the progenitors of the other. There must 
be other powers and principles at work in nature as 
well as Natural Selection. 

The law of the weak being made to give way 
before the strong is very apt to be abused, and will 
certainly be perverted by those who do not take 
into account the other and higher laws which limit 
it, and are expected to subordinate it. If they look 
to it alone, they will understand it as meaning that 
the poor and the helpless need not be protected or 
defended, but may be allowed to perish: thus bring- 
ing us down to the condition of the South Sea 
Islanders, who kill their infants; of the Hindoos 
and Africans, who expose their aged parents, as 
having become useless. If this doctrine prevails, 
it will make the shadow on the dial of time go back 





‘ 
- 
( 
; 
( 


LIMITS TO NATURAL SELECTION. és 


for ages, and bring us to the age of monster ani- 
mals, or monster men, like Samson or like Her- 
cules. Persons would look upon it as meaning 
that the uncivilized races may be allowed to disap- 
pear, without an effort being made to raise them ; 
a principle which, in old times, would have required 
that our German or British or Celtic ancestors, in 
the days of Julius Cesar, and as described by him, 
should have been allowed to die out and to vanish. 
Nature itself, if only we condescend to discover the 
final cause in her operations, rebels against this 
cowardice, and shows us the mother loving with an 
especial tenderness, not the strong son who can do 
for himself, but that weak boy who has been the 
object of her care from his infancy; and she will 
cherish him, in the hope that he may display softer 
and finer traits of character to which the healthy 
youth isa stranger. If the tenet which I am de- 
nouncing come to be the prevailing belief in this 
country, it will issue in the weak races on this con- 
tinent, the Indian and the Negro, being consigned 
to a slow but certain dissolution; and ridicule will 
be poured on the attempts which philanthropic 
men are at present making to elevate them by 
schools and colleges, by justice and by kindness. 
A doctrine this, worse than slave-holding in its 
worst features, and quite as likely to be entertained 
by the self-sufficient North as by the conquered 
South, suffering at present for its sins, but certain to 
rise in the future, if only it can be induced to aim 
at raising and improving that race which of late 


66 NATURAL THEOLOGH 


years has, all unknowingly to itself, had so impor- 
tant a place in the providential dealings of God 
towards this country; and which, as it remains 
among us, must be for our weal or our woe, accord- 
ing as we hasten to educate them, or allow them to 
fall into deeper degradation. JI admit the tendency 
of mankind to degenerate; but I believe in a power 
to restrain and reverse it. It was the power which 
brought our Lord on that morning from the tomb, 
and whose function it is to enlighten the ignorant, 
to strengthen the weak, and raise the fallen; and, 


as it does so, to put what it attains under the benefi- - 


cent law of hereditary descent, so that it may go 
down from father to son, and from one generation 
to another, through all coming ages. 

At this present time, the two theories of man’s 
origin, the earth-born and the heaven-born, are 
striving for the mastery. According to the earth- 
born theory, there are essentially inferior races, 
which are doomed to give ‘way “in the struggle for 
existence ;” and the defenders of it look on the pros- 
pect with complacency, provided a few favored races 
are enabled to advance on “the principle of natural 
selection.” I believe that this tenet 1s exercising, 
directly or indirectly, a very injurious influence on 
public sentiment in this country and in others. This 
spirit is setting itself determinedly against mission- 
ary effort, is scoffing at all alleged good done to the 
degraded, and undermining that faith among” our 
students which would prompt them to labor for the 
good of the heathen or the outcast. In the last 





ee eee ee ee eee ee 


DUTY OF ELEVATING THE FALLEN. 64 


age the cry was, First civilize, and then Chris- 
tianize; and it was uttered by men who took no 
pains either to civilize or to Christianize. The 
feeling now is, that it is of no use attempting to 
elevate the inferior races, and that they may be 
allowed to disappear, provided the higher races 
(such as the Aryan, and specially the Anglo-Saxon) 
are made to take their place. It is a fit creed and 
sentiment for those who wish to make the heathen, 
or the sunken among whom they dwell, the ministers 
of their grasping selfishness or of their lusts, with- 
out being troubled with any reproaches of con- 
science. How different in its practical bearing is 
the faith of the Christian, who holds that God has 
“made of one blood all nations ;” and that all human 
beings are alike in that they possess souls capable 
of improvement and destined to live for ever! 
Catching the spirit of Him who stood by the weak 
against the strong, who came to seek and save 
that which was lost, who permitted the woman who 
was a sinner to approach him, and ever sought to 
raise the fallen, the disciple of Christ recognizes as 
brothers and sisters the lowest specimens of hu- 
manity, whether found in pagan lands or in the 
lowest sinks of our cities; and, having experienced 
the power of truth and grace upon his own heart, 
he goes forth in the efficacy of the blood of Christ, 
and in the regenerating power of the Spirit, to ele- 
vate them for this world and the next. Need I ask 
which of these is the genuine philanthropy, most 
worthy of heaven, and suited to earth and to man’s 


68 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 


nature? I for one would not like to see all the 
varieties of mankind disappear, and the whole 
reduced to one race, though that should be the 
Anglo-Saxon, any more than I would like to see 
all the trees of the forest reduced to one species, 
though that should be the oak. I rejoice in the 
diversity which I see in all nature, —Jin sea and 
land, in hill and vale, in plant and animal; and I 
should like to see each race of mankind retaining 
its peculiarities, while all are elevated; so that the 
song of praise coming from regenerated humanity 
to the great Creator may not be a mere melody, but 
a harmony rising from “a great multitude, which 
no man can number, of all nations, and kindreds, 
and peoples, and tongues.” 

We have seen that there are insuperable diffi- 
culties, even in a Natural History point of view, in 
the theory that man is sprung from the brutes. 
And man appears in a state of things suited to him, 
and evidently prepared for him, in plants and ani- 
mals ready to afford him food and clothing and 
shelter and defence, arid also to gratify and to edu- 
cate his sense of beauty. Often have I heard my 
lamented friend Hugh Miller fondly dilating on this 
last subject. “They tell that man’s world, with all 
its griefs and troubles, is more emphatically a world 
of flowers than any of the creations that preceded 
it; and that as one great family, the Grasses, were 
called into existence, in order apparently that he 
might enter, in favoring circumstances, upon his 
two earliest avocations, and be in good hope a 





APPEARANCE OF MAN. 69 


keeper of herds and a tiller of the ground; and as 
another family of plants, the Rosacez, was created, 
in order that the gardens, which it would be also 
one of his vocations to keep and to dress, should 
have their trees ‘ good for food and pleasant to the 
taste :’ so flowers in general were properly produced 
just ere he appeared, to minister to the sense of 
beauty which distinguishes him from all other creat- 
ures, and to which he owes not a few of his most 
exquisite enjoyments.” It does not appear as if the 
surrounding tircumstances could have produced 
man, or that man could have produced the surround- 
ing circumstances; and in their contemporaneous 
appearance and mutual adaptation — man loving 
flowers, and flowers being cared for by him and 
improved — we may discover traces of design. 

When human beings come on the field, a new 
era commences, even in Natural History. Man 
modifies Natural Selection, by bringing things to 
gether which are separated in physical geography. 
The commission to him was: “Be fruitful, and 
multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: 
and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and 
over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing 
that moveth upon the earth.” Henceforth he acts 
on natural agents to modify and improve them; 
‘causing the earth to wave with grain and with fruits, 
and substituting sheep and kine and horses for wild 
and destructive animals. 

And as ages roll on, there is doubtless a progres- 
sion in human nature. The intellectual comes to 


70 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 


rule the physical, and the moral claims to sub- 
ordinate both. It is no longer strength of body 
that prevails, but strength of mind; while the law 
of God proclaims itself superior to both. ‘There: 
is still a Law of Natural Selection: but, under the 
new dispensation, the strong has met with a still 
stronger; and right, which is the strongest, would 
regulate both the strong body and the stronger 
mind. It may still be that the strongest, the fittest, 
are to prevail; but it is becoming evident that the 
strongest and the fittest are not physical, or even 
intellectual strength, but the moral forces supported 
by the righteous God. But all this is to be accom- 
plished and manifested by a struggle, in which we see 
that “God hath chosen the foolish things of the world 
to confound the wise ; and God hath chosen the weak 
things of the world to confound the things which are 
mighty ; and base things of the world, and things 
which are despised, hath God chosen ; yea, and things 
which are not, to bring to nought things that are.” 
The champions of Natural Religion, in defending 
the great doctrines of the Existence and Goodness 
of God, have often drawn far too fair a picture of 
the state of our world. Keeping sin and misery 
entirely out of sight, they argue as if there were 
nothing but beneficence to be seen. But this world 
is not now, and, so far as science throws light on the 
subject, it never has been, in the state in which the 
sentimental believer in theism represents it, or would 
wish it to be. Whatever we might expect or desire, 
our world is not now, and has never been, a scene of 





STRUGGLE JN THE HUMAN PERIOD. ye’ 


perpetual calm and never-ending sunshine, of peace 
and unmixed happiness, or of unbroken love on the 
part of every creature to every other. On the con- 
trary, there have been in it, from the beginning, 
warring elements and raging storms and creatures 
devouring each other. It is a world in which there 
are now, and ever have been since life began, pain 
and suffering, and the struggle of individuals and 
races for existence and for mastery. Yet, in the 
midst of these scenes, we see clear proofs of con- 
trivance and wisdom and kindness in the fittings 
of things into each other, and the evidently benefi- 
cent end of every organ of the animal frame, and in 
good being brought out of evil. The ocean is in 
many respects an emblem of this world of ours, — 
often so calm as to reflect heaven upon its bosom, 
but at times stirred into turbulence and revealing 
awful depths. There was a struggle in the pre- 
Adamite ages. There is a struggle in the human 
ages. The earth yields thorns and thistles, and 
man has to eat bread in the sweat of his face. 
Some of us were cherishing the idea that, in 
consequence of advancing intelligence, wars would 
very much cease. But this cannot be — perhaps we 
might go farther, and say it ought not to be — as long 
as such evils exist in our world; certain it is, it will 
not be till moral sentiment reaches a higher growth 
and exercises greater power. In our day, we have 
had, first in the western continent, and now the 
eastern, the two most desolating wars of which the 
earth has been the theatre; both, it may be, crush- 


72 NATURAL THEOLOGY: 


ing much evil, but both attended with awful suffer- 
ing, bodily and mental. The world, in its whole 
structure and administration, shows the goodness of 
God; but it manifests other qualities, so that as we 
look at it we “behold the goodness and severity of 
God.” It looks as if, from the beginning until now, 
our world were meant to be a probation, a battle-field. 
And is not this the very view the Scriptures give of 
it, —a contest between the good and the evil, a tri- 
umph and then true peace? “The whole creation 
groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now.” 
Our academic theists were refusing to look at our 
world under this aspect. Even some of our senti- 
mental Christians were turning away from it. It is 
a curious circumstance that it is science that has 
recalled our attention to it. The fool, as he looks at 
these things, will say in his heart that there is no 
God; and the proud man will say, “ Who is the 
Lord that we should obey him?” But he who is 
open to receive the truth, and the whole truth, will 
discover and acknowledge that we live in a scene 
in which there is the good, but in which there is also 
the evil, and in which it is evidently appointed by 
God that the good is to gain the victory, and “the 
earnest expectation of the creature waiteth” for it, 
and “the creature itself also shall be delivered from 
the bondage of corruption.” | 

But in order to this a new power appears on the 
earth. And it appears in the person of One who is 
identified with man, being born of a woman; and 
bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh, and who 





APPEARANCE OF CHRIST.- 74s 


yet descends from a higher sphere. The first man, 
notwithstanding his fall, was a great advance on all 
that’ had gone before; but the second man was 
immeasurably more so. “And so it is written, 
The first man Adam was made a living soul, 
the last Adam was made a quickening spirit.” 
He is the representative, as he is the administrator, 
in fact the life, of this new moral power which 
came down from heaven. He fits in with all that 
has gone before. ‘There were predictions of him 
in nature as well as in the Word, — predictions of 
him already fulfilled, and many more remaining to 
be accomplished. “Lo, I come (in the volume of 
the book it is written of me).” He comes in the 
fulness of time into a world which was prepared 
for him, not in the sense of being ready to receive 
him, but in the sense of needing him. In con- 
formity with the very nature of our world, with all 
that had gone before he comes to engage in a strug- 
gle; he has to fight a battle with evil, and to gain a 
victory. He has, in accordance with the whole 
purpose of God in our world, to show his power by 
contending with the evil, and thereby conquering 
and subduing it. “Who is this that cometh from 
Edom, with dyed garments from Bozrah? this that 
is glorious in his apparel, travelling in the great- 
ness of his strength? I that speak in righteousness, 
mighty to save. Wherefore art thou red in thine 
apparel, and thy garments like him that treadeth in 
wine-fat? I have trodden the wine-press alone, and 
of the people there was none with me.” This, in 
4 


"4 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 


accordance with the whole past of our world, —a 
world in which there had ever been the shedding 
of blood, a world in which there had been sin since 
man appeared; and here is One, “ without father, 
without mother, without descent,” who has come to 
bear down all opposition and to remove every evil. 
“Gird thy sword upon thy thigh, O most mighty, 
with thy glory and thy majesty. And in thy majesty 
ride prosperously, because of truth and meekness 
and righteousness; and thy right hand shall teach 
thee terrible things. Thine arrows are sharp in the 
heart of the king’s enemies; whereby the people 
fall under thee.” 

Closely connected with the work of Christ is 
another work; the one developing out of the other, 
as in all the operations of God. It was expedient 
that Jesus should finish his work, and go away, in 
order that another Agent might appear, and intro- 
duce a new life into our world. That life proceeded 
from Christ’s grave, but is sent down by Christ 
from heaven. The Spirit takes of the things that 
are Christ’s, and shows them unto us. A new life 
now manifests itself to us; not sprung from the 
earth, but descending from a higher region. It 
comes in silently and imperceptibly; so has life 
always done, — the life of the plant, the life of the 
animal. “’The wind bloweth where it listeth, and 
thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell 
whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every 
one that is born of the Spirit.” It is a reality, as 
every Christian can testify: “One thing I know 





MINISTRATION OF THE SPIRIT. 75 


that whereas I was blind, now I see.” This is an 
assuring fact to the man himself, and others might 
do well to ponder it. “But by what he now seeth 
we know not.” We can tell as little of the manner 
of it, as we can of the natural life within us, which 
we feel in every organ of our body; as little of its 
mode of introduction, as the man of science can of the 
introduction of life, or sensation, or consciousness. 
But the appearance of this new life is in analogy 
with all that has gone before, — analogous to the 
appearance of plant life and animal life and human 
life; analogous, also, to what has preceded, inas- 
much as, while it is something superinduced, it is 
not independent of what has gone before. The 
plant contains something higher than dead matter, 
but gathers up into itself all the properties of inani- 
mate matter; the animal has sensation not in the 
vegetable, but retains and uses all the qualities of 
the plant; and man has more than the brute, but 
retains all the animal endowments. “So is every 
one that is born of the Spirit.” Man has within his 
compound nature dead matter and living matter and 
sentient matter, and all his powers of intellect and 
feeling just as he had before; but he has something 
higher, controlling, enlivening, and guiding them. 
It is a new power, yet not separated from the old 
powers; but grafted upon the old, as the chemical] 
is upon the mechanical, as the vital is upon the 
chemical, and the mental on the vital. There is no 
proof that, in historical times, any new species of 
animal has appeared ; but here, in the human period. 


76 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 


is a new power, suited to the new era. ‘There were 
intimations of it in the Old Testament. But it was 
fully revealed when our Lord “spake of the Spirit 
which they that believe on Him should receive.” 
We thus see, more clearly than we could before 
these recent paleontological investigations, that there 
has been a unity in God’s mode of administra- 
tion on our earth, in all ages. We have new life 
appearing in the geological ages, and new life in 
the historical ages. No doubt it all follows laws; 
that is, order and progression. ‘There was doubt- 
less law in the appearance of species in the geologic 
ages. There seem to be laws in the operations of 
the Spirit. It is “like the wind which bloweth 
where it listeth;” but the wind has laws: so it is 
with the work of the Spirit in the soul and in the 
world. But in the case of the appearance of each 
of these modes of life, we see too little of the arc 
to be able to describe the whole circle. 

We now see clearly the nature of the dispensation 
under which we live, —the dispensation of the 
Spirit. There is, as there has been, in our earth, a 
struggle. But the contest is not between element 
and element, between the brutes and the elements, 
or between animal and animal. It is first a contest 
between man and nature, but it has also become a 
contest between the spiritual and the natural. It is 
specially a contest between sin and holiness. We 
see it in the heart of every man in the contest be- 
tween the passions raging like the sea and the 
conscience that would restrain them. We see it in 





THE GOOD PREVAILS. ry 


the heart of every believer, in which “the flesh 
lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the 
flesh ; and these are contrary the one to the other.” 
We see it in the world, which is a great battle-field, 
in which the combatants are truth and error, pol- 
lution and purity. There are clear indications as to 
which side is to gain the victory. True, we “see 
not yet all things put under Him:” and the reason 
is that we are in the heart of the battle, and have a 
work to do; and not at the close, to survey calmly 
what has been done. But there are powers operat- 
ing, — powers of God which are sure to prevail. 
“ Magna est veritas, et prevalebit.” The conscience 
in the heart claiming supremacy is only a symbol 
of the good asserting its right to reign, and subdue 
all things to itself. The believer dies like Samson, 
midst the glories of his strength, and slays in his 
death the last of his spiritual enemies. The light 
has as yet been only partially shed on our earth, 
but the sun has arisen which is to go round our 
globe. The work of the Spirit is at present only 
partial; but we have the assurance that the time is 
at hand, “when the Spirit of the Lord shall be 
poured on.all flesh.” 


We have been obliged, in this rapid run through 
the ages, to step as with seven-leagued boots from 
mountain-top to mountain-top, without being able 
to descend into the connections to be found in the 
interesting valleys lying between. And what have 
we gathered? 


"8 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 


_ (1.) We have discovered everywhere traces of 
Ends, or Final Cause. The whole school with which 
I am arguing are ever seeking to set aside or dispar- 
age final cause. Some of them clothe their pride in 
the garb of humility, and declare that it would be 
presumptuous in them to discover.the purposes of 
Deity. They are fond of claiming Francis Bacon 
as countenancing them. It may be of some mo- 
ment to inquire what was the precise teaching of 
that far-sighted and sagacious man on this subject. 
He adopts Aristotle’s fourfold division of causes: 
the Material, or the matter out of which a thing is 
formed; the Efficient, by which it is formed; the 
Formal, the form which it takes; and the Final, 
being the end which it is made to serve.* It could 
be shown, did my subject require or admit, that 
there is a deeper foundation for this division than 
later philosophers are disposed to allow. If we 


want to account for a thing, our inquiry will be, 


Out of what is it made; by what has it been made; 
what is the form or nature which it has been made 
to take; and what purposes is it meant to serve? 
Bacon sanctions and uses this distinction; and 
in his division of the sciences he proceeds upon it, 
and allots Material and Efficient Causes to Physics, 
and Formal and Final to Metaphysics, which he 
places above Physics. He condemns those who in 
Physics would mix up the inquiry into Final with 
that into Efficient Cause; as if one, who would 
determine the nature of the clouds, should satisfy 


* Aristotle, Metaphysics, B. iii. c. 1. 





, 
| 
| 


BACON AND FINAL CAUSE. "9 


himself with saying that they are placed in the sky 
to water the earth with showers. His language on 
this subject is not so guarded as it ought to be. In 
physiology, which inquires into the relations of 
structure in the plant and animal, we look to ends: 
it was in the very age in which Bacon lived, that 
Harvey, finding that the valves in the veins opened 
one way as if to let a liquid pass, but did not open 
on the other, argued, on the principle of final cause, 
that the blood must circulate in the frame. Still, 
Bacon is so far right that it is not expedient to mix 
the inquiry into physical cause with the inquiry into 
final. But Bacon takes Final Cause from Physics, 
simply to carry it up to a higher region and allot it 
to Metaphysics, which lift us to Theology, to God 
and Providence, by Formal and Final Causes. In 
his own graphic way he likens final causes to the ves- 
tal virgins, barren of fruit, but consecrated to God.* 

Just as there is, and should be, an inquiry into 
Efficient Cause, so there may be, so should there 
be, an inquiry into Final Cause. The Final Cause 
is often more obvious than the Efficient. The end 
of the eye and of the ear, which is to enable us to 
see and to hear, presses itself more on our notice 
than the physical agencies which have produced 
these complicated organs. 

We see now the importance and the application 
of the two preliminary points laid down in my first 
lecture. We see that because we have discovered 
a physical cause, we are not precluded from an 


* De Augmentis Scientiarum, iii. 4. 


80 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 


inquiry into final cause. When we discover that a 
telescope works by the laws of mechanism and of 
light, we are not to be kept from noticing the design 
of the instrument, which is to aid the eye in giving 
us a view of remote objects. Mr. Darwin has 
thrown out the idea that the eye, as found in the 
higher animals (such as the eagle), may have been 
formed on the principle of natural selection, in the 
course of millions of ages, from the simple appara- 
tus — found in lower creatures — of an optic nerve 
coated with pigment. Such a theory appears to 
many to be far-fetched and wire-drawn. He 
acknowledges that in such a case he cannot point 
out the transitional grades. But suppose that he 
could establish his hypothesis, we should still see 
the necessity of calling in a number of adaptations 
to account for the wonderful and complicated result. 
We should first have to presuppose a nerve sen- 
sitive to light. On this, all that he has to remark 
is, “ How a nerve comes to be sensitive to light 
hardly concerns us more than how life itself first 
originated.” * And all I have to remark is, that 
Mr. Darwin, in accounting for so many phenomena 
by natural law, does not so much as attempt to 
account for the origin of life, or of nerve force. 
And then, secondly, we must see the adaptations 
which have secured that substances should attach 
themselves to the nerve till it becomes the beautiful 
mechanism of the eye of the higher animals and 
of man. And finally we have not to overlook the 


* Origin of Species, chap. vi. 


PHYSICAL AND FINAL CAUSE. Si 


most wonderful fact of all, that this structure enables 
the animal to see. In like manner, when we have 
traced the formation of the animal frame to cer- 
tain powers, mechanical, chemical, and vital, — or 
because we suppose we have resolved the vital 
power into the chemical, and the chemical into 
the mechanical, —this should not prevent us from 
looking at the obvious purpose served by the eye, 
the ear, and every organ of the body. So, should 
it be found that the elevation of species proceeds 
from the laws of heredity —it may be from the law 
of selection — this would not even tend to lessen the 
force of the argument from design. We see, too, 
the importance of the other preliminary point, that 
because we are unacquainted with the precise nature 
of the forces in operation we are not thereby to be 
precluded from discovering a purpose. ‘The work- 
man may be very imperfectly acquainted with the 
agencies employed in his factory, but he is sure 
that there are method and design in the machine 
which turns out such products. I believe that the 
most profound physiologist has penetrated but a very 
little way into the secret machinery of the life of 
the individual plant and animal, and still less into 
the agencies which produce one plant or animal 
from another; and less still into the powers, what- 
ever they be, which made organisms progress from 
one geologic age to another. But he has only to 
open his eyes, and allow his intellect to follow its 
spontaneous course, to discover that in every organ 
of the animated being, and in the development of 
fs 


82 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 


the organic being, there is an end to accomplish, 
and a means to accomplish it. 

But it will be necessary, at this place, to answer 
some of the objections brought by this school against 
the doctrine of discoverable ends in nature. These 
objections have no novelty in them. They have 
been answered, at least in substance, a hundred 
times; but they require to be answered once more, 
since they continue to be urged. 

There are physiologists who would blunt the 
edge of the argument, by saying that the organ, 
which suits the exigencies of the animal so nicely, 
is*only the “condition of the existence” ofthe 
animal. I do not object to this language; which is 
said to have been introduced by Cuvier, so fond of 
discovering final cause. Our argument is drawn 
from the very circumstance that so many and such 
complicated conditions should meet to supply the 
wants, and promote the comfort, and, it may be, 
the beauty and utihty, of the living creature. 


It is asserted that in many cases we cannot see the 


end contemplated. The reply is not far to seek. In 
order to discover design in a structure, it is not neces- 
sary that we should be able to declare the meaning 
of every part of it. The soldier may see enough to 
convince him that there is plan in bringing so many 
men together to form that powerful army, and skill 
in conducting that successful campaign, though he 
be not able to fathom all the intentions of the com- 
mander, or discover why this regiment is required 
to move in this rather than in that direction. We 


—— ee ee ee 


OBYECTIONS TO FINAL CAUSE. 83 


may be able reverently to discover purposes in 
God’s works, without pretending to be able to find 
out what God doeth from the beginning to the end. 

“To the hypothesis of special creations,” says 
Mr. Herbert Spencer,* “a difficulty is presented by 
the absence of high forms of life during those 
innumerable epochs of the earth’s existence which 
geology records. But to the hypothesis of evolution 
this absence is no such obstacle. Suppose evolu- 
tion, and this question is necessarily excluded. 
Suppose special creations, and this question (un- 
avoidably raised) can have no satisfactory answer.” 
I am not at present standing up either for or against 
special creations; but surely the facts referred to 
have no bearing, real or apparent, in opposition 
to the doctrine of final cause. Whether it has been 
by special creation or by evolution, there are plan 
and purpose visible in the number and variety of 
animated beings; in all God’s creatures, even the 
lowest, enjoying life; and in the lower creatures 
rising to the higher. 

Mr. Lewes urges that the circumstance that so 
many of the seeds floating in the air and water never 
germinate into plants and animals, is an evidence 
~of failure, and is inconsistent with final cause.f 
But may it not be the very purpose of God, by 
the superabundance of germs, to secure that there 
should be living beings everywhere (in every hole 
and cranny). enjoying life or nourishing life? We 
know, too, that many of these superfluous (as they 


Sern. of Biok P. its c. 3. + Fraser’s Magazine, Oct. 1867, 


84 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 


may seem) seeds are the provided nutriment for liv- 
ing creatures. We also know that, in this world of 
ours, no power is lost; and the seeds which do not 
rise into animated beings go back into the great 
ocean of life, out of which other creatures may rise. 
All analogy leads us to believe that there is not an 
atom or germ in our world but serves some purpose, 
whether we are able to discover it or not. 

Mr. Wallace maintains that, if the doctrine of 
final cause holds good, “there ought to be no natural 
objects which are disagreeable or ungraceful in our 
eyes. And it is undoubtedly the fact that there are 
many such. Just as surely as the horse and deer 
are beautiful and graceful, the elephant, rhinoce- 
ros, hippopotamus and camel are the reverse.” * 
To this I reply, in the first place, that, according 
to the principle of final cause, God is not bound to 
make every creature beautiful. He has scattered 
beauty all around us, in earth and sky, in plant and 
animal, in man and woman; but it is not necessary 
for our happiness and comfort that he should impart 
to every object qualities which are fitted to raise 
excited esthetic feeling. For, secondly, it is not 
reckoned the highest taste to have every part of a 
scene characterized by sublimity or beauty. In 
historical painting, the grand figures are made to 
stand out from plain neutral colors. And, once 
more, God contemplates, in all his works, higher 
ends than the gratification of esthetic taste; and 
we are not to expect him to sacrifice utility to grace 


* Natural Selection, viii. 


OBFECTIONS TO FINAL CAUSE. 85 


or ornament. ‘To apply these principles to only 
one of his examples: No one would say that the 
camel is as beautiful as the horse or the deer; yet 
no one who has true taste will say that it is ugly. 
The camel is an object of interest to every thinking 
mind, and has even a sort of beauty, as it is seen 
performing its beneficent ends in its native clime. 
It has been shown that what may seem to be de- 
formities enable it the better to fulfil the good ends 
of its existence. The enlargement of its feet, with 
their convex soles, allows it to tread easily on the 
loose yielding sand of the desert; and the callosi- 
ties, or pads, upon its legs allow it to lie down and 
repose on scorching surfaces. And these humps 
are supplies of superabundant nourishment provided 
for their long journeys: so that, when deprived of 
other food, their frames feed on this nutriment; 
and it has been observed that, at the close of a long 
journey, their humps have been much diminished 
in size. Every organ has thus a purpose, though 
that may not be the production of beauty. 

Mr. Spencer appeals to a profounder series of 
facts, which seem to show that there are provisions 
in nature which seem to produce evil, instead of 
good. “Still more marked is this contrast between 
the two hypotheses, in presence of that vast amount 
of suffering entailed on all orders of sentient beings 
by their imperfect adaptations to their conditions 
of life, and the further vast amount of suffering 
entailed on them-by enemies and by parasites. We 
saw that, if the organisms were severally designed 


86 NATURAL THEOLOGY: 


for their respective places in nature, the inevita- 
ble conclusion is, that these thousands of kinds 
of inferior organisms, which prey upon superior 
organisms, were intended to inflict all the pain 
and mortality which results. But the hypothesis 
of evolution involves us in no such dilemma. 
Slowly, but surely, evolution brings about an in- 
creasing amount of happiness, all evils being 
incidental.” * JI acknowledge that Mr. Spencer has 
here come in sight of a mystery, which our mere 
academic theists are unwilling to look at, —the 
profound mystery of the existence of pain and evil 
in our world. It brings us back to that old contest 
which, we have seen, has characterized our world 
from the beginning. Religion cannot dispel that 
cloud, but it so far irradiates it. These groan- 
ings and travailings of the old world seem but an 
anticipation of the grand battle between ignorance 
and light, between sin and salvation, in the pres- 
ent era of our earth’s history.t We who have risen 
to a belief in the existence and in the benevolence 
of God can cherish the reasonable conviction that 
“ what we know not now we shall know hereafter ; ” 

* Principles of Biology, P. iii. 3. 

ft In answering a like objection brought by Mr. Lewes, I find 
the thoughtful comparative anatomist of the age, Professor 
Owen, remarking: ‘‘ True it is, this is a world of pain as well as 
of pleasure, wherein I may ask Posit:vism leave to say, ‘God 
works by means.’ Patience, endurance, faith in the end designed, 
a nature purified as by fire, accepting the trial with thanks- 
giving, — these be facts visible amongst the higher recognizable 


phenomena offered to our pondering here below.” — Fraser’s 
Magazine, Oct. 1867. 


OBFECTIONS TO FINAL CAUSE. 87 


that there has been all along goodness in what 
has occurred ; and that the good shall at last utterly 
destroy the evil. But what can they make of it 
who believe in no God, and who can see no trace 
of his goodness in nature? What can they make 
of those convulsions of nature which have swept 
away so many animated creatures, so many human 
beings apparently in the midst of torture, — though, 
in the case of the lower animals, with less pain 
than we suppose? What are they to make of pain 
and sorrows and bereavements when they come upon 
themselves? Not only can they see no meaning, 
they have no ground for believing that there is a 
meaning. ‘They come they know not whence; they 
tend they know not whither. There is no Father’s 
love in them for the present, and where they may 
end they cannot tell. Mr. Spencer refers us, 
as if to comfort us, to the hypothesis of evolution: 
“Slowly, but surely, evolution brings about an 
increasing amount of happiness, all evils being 
incidental.” Would this give comfort to the widow 
grieving over the separation from a husband, to 
the father deprived of an only son, to the tender 
woman racked for years with pain? Would it 
compose their grief to tell them that, fifty millions 
of years hence, things by rubbing would be so 
adapted to each other that there might be no more 
pain or sorrow; being obliged to add, if they told 
the whole truth, that in fifty millions more the whole 
race of animated creatures would be, slowly but 
surely, burnt up in fire? Would they not, as we 


88 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 


urged this consolation, say in reply: “Miserable 
comforters are ye all! — Ye are all physicians of no 
value”? Ido believe that the evolution which we 
actually see in the world is so beneficently arranged 
that all the evils are incidental, and that there is an 
ever-increasing amount of happiness; but it is 
because it has been arranged by a good God. 
Without this, evolution might work an _ ever- 
increasing amount of misery, and direst evils be 
the direct consequence. Mr. Spencer is ever 
telling us, in his usual dogmatic manner and his- 
customary generalizing flights, that the operation 
of evolution and physical law must be beneficial. 
But I see no necessity for this: I can find no 
security for it. If the powers at work be blind 
forces, they may as readily produce destruction as 
beneficent construction, and would probably pro- 
duce now the one and now the other. True, if 
they be modes of God’s action, the issue must be 
beneficent; for there is intelligence in them and 
benevolence in them. 

It thus appears, as the result of our lengthened 
induction, that in the midst of the potencies of 
nature there is a Divine power controlling and guid- 
ing them to ends; and bringing order, I do not say 
out of confusion, for there is no proof that there 
ever was confusion in God’s universe, — chaos is a 
creation of heathenism, and was never seen in the 
actual world, — but producing order where there 
might have been confusion, and making a Cosmos 
where there might have been a chaos. 


APPEARANCE OF NEW AGENCIES. 89 


(2.) There is the appearance ever and anon of 
New Agencies. We may allow that there were me- 
chanical, gravitating, and it may be chemical prop- 
erties in the original star dust. But, superinduced 
on these, there are new powers. Life appears ; plants 
appear; animals appear; new species of plants and 
animals appear; and man appears with his high 
capacities. Itis easy for flippant minds to talk of 
all this being effected by natural forces; but the 
forces which could accomplish this have not yet 
been exposed to our view. It may seem profound 
wisdom to represent all this as produced by develop- 
ment, but development of itself implies a complex 
process of which we do not know the elements. The 
chemist cannot produce one of these agents in his 
laboratory, except out of agents already possessing 
them; and the widest observation in space and time 
has not detected nature accomplishing any such 
feat. The truly scientific man will not dogmatize as 
to how these agents were introduced, for he has no 
light from observation to guide him. The religious 
man, as he has no revelation to instruct him, has no 
right to say they are the result of a special fiat or 
of the arrangement of old materials, except indeed 
in the case of man, whose soul was breathed into 
him by the inspiration of the Almighty. That there 
has been law — that is, order —in the appearance 
of these new agents is very evident; but what were 
the means, if means there were, is unknown to us. 
Let us not assert where we have no evidence. But 
let us declare, for we have evidence, that God is 


ore) NATURAL THEOLOGY. . 


to be seen in these new appearances, whether we 
trace them to an immediate creation or a preordained 
arrangement. 

(3.) There is proof of Plan in the Organic Unity 
and Growth of the World. As there is evidence of 
purpose, not only in every organ of the plant, but 
in the whole plant; not only in every limb of the 
animal, but in the whole animal frame, and in the 
growth of both plant and animal from month to 
month and year to year: so there are proofs of 
design, not merely in the individual plant and indi- 
vidual animal, but in the whole structure of the 
Cosmos and in the manner in which it makes prog- 
ress from age to age. Every reflecting mind, in 
tracing the development of the plant or animal, will 
see a design and a unity of design in it, in the 
unconscious elements being all made to conspire to 
a given end, in the frame of the animated being 
taking a predetermined form; so every one trained 
in the great truths of advanced science should see 
a contemplated purpose in the way in which the 
materials and forces and life of the universe are 
made to conspire, to secure a progress through inde 
terminate ages. ‘The persistence of force may be 
one of the elements conspiring to this end; the law 
of Natural Selection may be another, or it may 
only be a modification of the same: all and, each 
work in the midst of a struggle for existence, in 
which the strong prevail and the weak disappear. 
But in all this there is a starting point and a ter- 
minus, and rails along which the powers run, and 


UNITY OF THE WORLD. oI 


an intelligence planning and guiding the whole, 
and bringing it to its destination freighted with 
blessings. 

The accomplishrient of all this implies arrange- 
ment and co-agency. ‘There are order and pro- 
gression, we have seen, in the physical works of 
God: this is said, in modern nomenclature, to be a 
law. Alawof what? Is it a law in the Divine 
mind? Yes: it is a law there before it appears asa 
law in nature. It is a rule of the Divine procedure. 
But is it not also a law of nature? It certainly is 
so in the loose acceptation of the word /aw now 
adopted. But in what sense? Certainly not in the 
sense of a simple, self-acting property, but in a 
widely different sense, —in the senseof a generalized 
fact or co-ordination of facts.* But all such laws 
are complex: they result from the co-ordination and 


* Dr. Chalmers drew the distinction between the Laws of 
Matter and the Collocations of Matter, and drew the argument 
from design chiefly from the Collocations of Matter. I have 
shown that in General Laws collocations, or mutual adaptations, 
are always implied. ‘‘So far from general laws being able, as 
superficial thinkers imagine, to produce the beautiful adaptations 
which are so numerous in nature, they are themselves the results 
of nicely balanced and skilful adjustments. So far from being 
simple, they are the product of many arrangements; just as the 
hum which comes from a city, and which may seem a simple 
sound, is the joint effect of many blended voices; just as the 
musical note is the effect of numerous vibrations; as the curi- 
ous circular atoll-reefs met with in the South Seas are the 
product of millions of insects. So far from being independ- 
ent principles, they are dependent on many other principles. 
They are not agencies, but ends contemplated by Him who 
adjusted the physical agencies which produced them. As such, 


92 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 


adaptation of an immense body of agencies, just as 
the keeping of time by the chronometer results from 
an assortment of divers instruments, such as the 
mainspring and attached machinery. ‘The revolu- 
tion, for instance, of the earth round the sun is not 
a property either of the earth or of the sun, but of 
a combination of a centripetal and centrifugal force, 
and of the relation of the two bodies to each other. 
The law followed by the plant when it springs from 
the seed, grows and bears seed, is still more com- 
plex, employing a greater number of powers and 
adaptations of particles one to another, and of grav- 
itating, chemical, electric, and vital agents. But 
the law of the progression of all plants and of all 
animals is a still more complex one, implying 
adjustment upon adjustment of all the elements and 
all the powers of nature towards the accomplish- 
ment of an evidently contemplated end, in which are 
displayed the highest wisdom and the most consid- 
erate goodness. 

(4.) Wesee Higher and Higher Products appear- 
ing, and manifesting higher perfections of God. 
The blind Forces are made to work out Ideas 
in the Platonic Sense. The Mundus Sensibilis 
becomes a Mundus Intelligibilis, taking forms with 
geometric proportions and of esthetic beauty, and 
clothed with melodious and harmonious colors. 


they become the rules of God’s house, the laws of his king: 
dom; and wherever we see such laws, there we see the certain 
traces of-a law-giver.” — Method of Divine Government, B. I. 
Crile > 3 


HIGHER PRODUCTS APPEARING. 93 


Sensation and feeling now appear; and there is a 
wonderful structure and adaptation of limb and 
joint and nerve to furnish means of activity and of 
enjoyment, which in the whole animal creation 
become great beyond calculation. We now see 
that this intelligent is also a benevolent power. 
Crowning all, we have Mind and the Law written 
in the heart, and declaring that right is above 
might; and we have the good advancing in the 
midst of opposition, and in the face of opposition, 
asserting that it will at last subdue all to itself, and 
rule in the name of God. And we now see what 
God reckons the highest of all, — higher than order, 
higher than intelligence, higher than sensation ; 
and this is holiness, —a holiness not independent 
of intelligence, but a holy intelligence; not inde- 
pendent of love, but a holy love. God is the same 
in all time; but, as the ages roll on, they unfold 
higher and ever higher perfections. These three— 
the Power, the Intelligence, the Benevolence — are 
seen combining to form the pure white light of 
holy love. “God is a Spirit,” “God is Light,” and 
“God is Love.” ‘These are the stars which have 
emerged from the star dust to form One Grand 
Central Sun of pure and dazzling brightness, which 
we cannot open our eyes without seeing, but which, 
as we would gaze upon it, causes them to close in 
awe and adoration. 

(5.) The journey we have taken, and the height 
we have reached, open glimpses of the Future His- 
tory of our World. We see everywhere signs of 


94 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 


progress. There is progress in agriculture, there 
is progress in the arts, there is progress in all the 
sciences; man’s dominion over nature is rapidly 
increasing, and the earth, every succeeding year, 
is made to yield a greater produce. The fruit of 
the discoveries of one age contains the germ of the 
discoveries of the generation following; and the 
new plant springs alongside of the old one to scat- 
ter seed like its progenitor all around. No valuable 
invention of human genius is ever lost; and most 
of them become the means of multiplying them- 
selves by a greater than compound proportion, 
and thus render each generation richer than the 
one that went before. The wealth of all preced- 
ing generations is thus to be poured into the lap 
of the generations that are to live in the coming 
ages of our world’s history. The struggle for 
existence still goes on; but there is evidence 
that the intellectual is to show itself stronger than 
the physical and the moral, always under the 
government of God, stronger than either. For 
the present, we see the serpent biting the heel 
of the seed of the woman: but the age of serpents, 
with their crushing force and their cunning, is to 
pass away; and we see proof that the woman’s 
heaven-born seed is to crush the head of the ser- 
pent; and, as Plato forecast it, the good shall be 
the uppermost, and the evil the undermost, for 
evermore. 

- Ido not know whether any of my hearers have 
ever gone up from Riffelberg to Gérner Grat, in the 


FUTURE OF THE WORLD. 95 


High Alps, to behold the sun rise. Every moun- 
tain catches the light according to the height which 
the upheaving forces that God set in motion have 
given it. First the point of Monte Rosa is kissed 
by the morning beams, blushes for a moment, and 
forthwith stands clear in the light. Then the 
3reithorn and the dome of Muschabel and the Mate 
terhorn, and twenty other grand mountains, embrac- 
ing the distant Jung Frau, receive each in its 
turn the gladdening rays, bask each for a brief 
space, and then remain bathed in sunlight. Mean- 
while, the valleys between lie down dark and dis- 
malas death. But the light which has risen is the 
light of the morning; and these shadows are even 
now lessening, and we are sure they will soon 
altogether vanish. Such is the hopeful view I 
take of our world. “Darkness covered the earth, 
and gross darkness the people;” but God’s light 
hath broken forth as the morning, and to them who 
sat in darkness a great light has arisen. Already 
I see favored spots illuminated by it: Great Britain 
and her spreading colonies; and Prussia, extend- 
ing her influence; and the United States, with her 
broad territory and her rapidly increasing popula- 
tion, —stand in the light; and I see, not twenty, but 
a hundred points of light, striking up.in our scat- 
tered mission stations, — in old continents and 
secluded isles and barren deserts, according as 
God’s grace and man’s heaven-kindled love have 
favored them. And much as I was enraptured 
with that grand Alpine scene, and shouted irrepres- 


96 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 


sibly as I surveyed it, I am still more elevated, and 
I feel as if I could cry aloud for joy, when I hear 
of the light advancing from point to point, and 
penetrating deeper and deeper into the darkness 
which, we are sure, is at last to be dispelled, to 
allow our earth to stand clear in the light of the 
Sun of Righteousness. 


IV. 


PROOF OF THE EXISTENCE OF MIND AND OF ITS POSSESSING 
THE CAPACITY OF KNOWLEDGE.— DOCTRINES OF NES- 
CIENCE AND RELATIVITY. 


77 PRESS AUNEA SOLES the previous discussions I 

have been constantly obliged to employ or to 
refer to philosophic principles. In the full exposi- 
tion of the argument, it will be necessary to con- 
sider these, as well as the physical facts, that the 
defence may be complete throughout. But this 
implies that we take a look at the soul of man. 
Not that we are to examine the mind in its entirety ; 
not that we are to dissect it metaphysically: we 
are to view it simply in its relation to God and to 
religion. Some of the discussions on which I am 
to enter may seem a little too recondite; but all of 
them bear upon the prevailing errors of the day. 
I profess to keep a sharp outlook on the current of 
opinion all over the world, especially among young 
men. Iam ever asking the watchman, “ What of 
the night?” and, in these Lectures, I take up the 
topics of the day; but it would be better not to dis- 
cuss them at all than not discuss them thoroughly. 
In coming Lectures, I will start from the positions 

5 


98 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 


reached in this to examine Positivism and Material- 
ism, — the doctrines likely to flourish for a season 
among the young men who catch the spirit of the 
age in its latest fashion. 

Those whom I am opposing constitute a school 
with a diversity of teachers. Though, as a whole, 
they are men of narrow sympathies and an exclusive 
temper, and can discern only a small segment of 
the wide and profound meaning of the universe, — 
are, in fact, not catholic nor cosmopolitan, but in- 
tensely sectarian in their spirit, — yet they cultivate 
with zeal and ability a number of branches of 
knowledge. ‘Their physiology is associated with a 
psychology and a philosophy, and, I may add, a 
method of history. They have men of eminence 
in each of these departments; and each in his way 
joins with others in their way in furthering a com- 
mon cause and fostering a common belief, or rather 
unbelief. They have some of the literary and — 
scientific institutions of Great Britain very much in 
their own hands, and are seeking to find a place in 
others. ‘They are laboring to lay hold of young 
men connected with the press, and have been 
specially successful with two classes: with those 
who would like to be thought philosophers, but who 
have no time nor taste for the study of a deeper 
philosophy; and with those who, in a feeling of 
disappointment, have been obliged to turn aside 
from their intended professions in life — most com- 
monly the church — to engage in literary pursuits. 
They have a body of adherents eager to propagate 


\ 


AIM OF THE POSITIVE SCHOOL. 99 


their system, and ever ready to make an assault on 
all who would inculcate a philosophy of a higher 
and more spiritual character. 

There is a unity in their system and in their ends. 
They aim at accounting for the whole of nature 
by development out of they know not what. They 
derive man from the brutes, and make him merely 
an upper brute. They do not deny the existence 
of the soul; but they identify it with the body. All 
the higher ideas of man they manufacture, by 
means of association of ideas, out of impressions got 
by the senses and an inward sentient experience, 
and by development from the lower races of hu- 
manity and the ancestral animals through millions 
of ages. History is a mere evolution of natural 
causes, working without any discoverable meaning 
or end. The lower animals and the plants come 
out of the protoplasm, and the protoplasm out of 
the star dust, and the star dust out of they know 
not what, —out of what never can be known, and 
about which, therefore, it is unphilosophical to 
inquire. They all agree that of the nature and 
reality of things we know nothing, and can know 
nothing. All that we know is represented as 
feelattve; that is, we can know any one thing 
merely in relation to some other one thing, itself 
unknown. ‘They are determinedly agreed that we 
can discover no indications of first or final causes; 
that the supernatural, if there be a supernatural, 
must lie in a region beyond human ken; and that 
religion has no title to excite a fear or kindle a 


100 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 


hope. A young friend of mine, who had to sit 
from day to day, through a college session, under 
a distinguished professor belonging to this school, 
told me that, at the close of every lecture, he had 
to debate with himself the question: “ Have or have 
I not a soul?” “Am I areality?” or, “Is there any 
reality?” As having to withstand the assaults of 
these men who profess to go down so deep, we 
must see that our foundations are well laid. 

J. AND SO THE QUESTION IS STARTED, WHAT 
PROOF HAVE WE OF THE EXISTENCE OF MIND? 
It is necessary to take up such an elementary ques- 
tion as this in our day, to meet the advancing 
materialism which is springing out of the decay 
(as they suppose) of all old creeds, philosophical 
and theological. A materialism, refined, zsthetical, 
but sensualistic, has been the reigning philosophy 
(if philosophy it can be called) in France, under 
that repression of free thought, ever bursting out 
in secret license, which characterized the régvme 
of Louis Napoleon. It has considerable power 
among physicists in Germany; being the hollow, 
in this age, on the back of the height which think- 
ers occupied in the last age (it is, in fact, the bog 
into which the will-a-wisp Hegelianism has con- 
ducted not a few of those who followed it), — my 
hope is that it will be so far counteracted by the 
glorious outburst of patriotism which the present 
war has called forth, and which has been fond of 
recognizing a providence. It is the issue — whether 
they see it or no, whether they mean it or no—to 


WE KNOW SELF IMMEDIATELY. IOI 


which Mill’s association theory, and Bain’s identifi- 
cation of all our thoughts and feelings with the 
body, and Mr. Herbert Spencer’s development of 
all things out of an unknowable nothing, and Hux- 
ley’s physical basis of life and mind in molecular 
action, are severally and conjointly conducting the 
young thinkers of Great Britain. The sun rises 
some hours later in America than in Europe; and 
doctrines which have sprung up in Deutschland, 
and come across to England, like a fog from the 
German Ocean, take some little time to cross the 
Atlantic; but already we see proof that we are on 
the eve of a conflict with a physico-philosophy, 
which would account for all mental action and ideas 
by molecular motion, or some form of material 
agency. To meet it, we lay down a few simple 
positions. 

1. Man has means of knowing the existence of 
mind as immediate as the means of knowing the 
existence of matter. —It is necessary to make this 
remark, because it is often said that man can know 
directly only his-own bodily frame and the objects 
falling under his senses, and can arrive at the 
knowledge of mind —if, indeed, there be a mind, 
and if he can come to be certain of its existence — 
only by acircuitous process. It 1s supposed that he 
comes first to know the existence of his material 
organism; and that, proceeding upon this, he con- 
cludes that there is or may be a spiritual principle, 
as it were lying deeper in than the visible and 
tangible frame. According to this view, our knowl- 


I02 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 


edge of the existence of mind is reached by a 
process of inference, and there are persons who 
dispute its legitimacy. They tell us that, as physi- 
ology is advancing in its researches, mind is retiring 
farther and farther back; and nota few are cherish- 
ing the expectation that, in the course of time, they 
may be delivered from it altogether; and that they 
may account for every exercise of thought and feel- 
ing by mechanical and chemical processes, by elec- 
tric and nervous agency. Now, I meet all these 
objections by denying that it is by any such length- 
ened or circuitous process that we come to discover 
the existence of mind. I affirm that we know mind, 
just as we know matter, directly and immediately. 
We can, in a sense, experiment upon the mind, 
in order to discover its working. We set out from 
our dwelling into the heart of a pleasant scene of 
hills and vales, and trees and streams. It is not 
by a perplexing process of reasoning that we believe 
this oak and that rock to exist: we have an intul- 
tive and immediate knowledge of them by the 
senses. While we look at these objects, we are 
conscious that we do so; we are conscious, intui- 
tively and immediately conscious, of a self different 
from the scene we are contemplating. While we 
behold the objects, we are led to form certain judg- 
ments regarding them: this hill is higher than this 
other hill; this tree is a pine and this other a maple ; 
this stream is pure and flowing rapidly. While we 
thus judge and reason about these objects, we are 
conscious of a self that is doing so. While we are 


CONSCIOUSNESS OF SELF. I03 


enjoying the scene, we see a company of children 
playing on the bank of the river, and they seem so 
happy that we rejoice in their joy, and are as con- 
scious of our joy as we are of their existence. But, 
unexpectedly, two of the boys begin to quarrel; and 
the stronger knocks the other into the water, and 
the stream is bearing him along, apparently, to 
destruction. We are forthwith filled with horror 
and indignation at the deed; we feel ourselves 
reprobating the conduct of the violent youth; and, 
feeling pity for the boy who is sinking in the waters, 
we rush into the stream in the hope of rescuing 
him. We are as certain that there is a something 
perceiving the scene, as that there is a scene per 
ceived; that there is a mind comparing the hills, 
trees, and streams, as that there are hills, trees, 
and streams to be compared; that there is a soul 
reprobating the passionate boy, as that there is a 
boy to be reprobated; that we have not more con- 
vincing evidence that there is a boy drowning in 
the river, than we have of the other fact that we are 
cherishing compassion towards him; and we are 
not more assured that the child is in danger, than 
we are that we have resolved to rescue him. And 
let us observe, carefully, how much is implied in 
what we have thus felt as passing through our minds : 
we are conscious of a self performing a great num- 
ber and variety of acts, as perceiving, judging, 
reasoning, distinguishing between good and evil, 
as under the influence of deep emotion, as willing 
and fulfilling our determinations. It follows: -- 


104 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 


2. That we have a positive though limited 
knowledge of mind, even as we have a positive 
though limited knowledge of body. ‘There are 
eminent metaphysicians, among whom we may 
reckon Kant, who maintain that we can know 
nothing of matter, except that it exists: matter is 
described as‘the unknown something producing the 
impressions which we feel in our minds. Now, 
with all deference to the distinguished men who 
have held this dogma, I believe it to be utterly 
inconsistent with the intuitive declarations of con- 
sciousness. Man is possessed of a power or attri- 
bute, by which he knows, I believe, immediately, 
‘the objects by which he is surrounded. He knows 
matter as extended in length, breadth, and depth, 
and as exercising certain active properties, as mov- 
ing or striking other objects, or as being repelled. 
In all this, it is true, he is far from knowing all 
about matter: matter may have properties which 
are latent, —latent, inasmuch as we have never 
seen them exercised; or latent, inasmuch as we 
may never be able to discover them; but still he 
has a knowledge, limited, no doubt, but positive 
and trustworthy so far as it goes. I have referred 
to this error at the one extreme, only that I may be 
able the better to expose an error at the other 
extreme. A living writer says that the only method 
by which mind can be defined as a substance is, 
“by taking the realities of which we have expe- 
rience, and abstracting one property after another, 
until we have an entity without extension, with- 


WE HAVE A KNOWLEDGE OF MIND. 105 


out resistance, without parts, without divisibility,” 
&c. Now, it appears to me, we might with as much 
propriety declare that we could not define matter 
except as an entity, without consciousness, without 
thought, without will. Just as we define matter 
by positives as extended, as possessed of attrac- 
tion and other properties; so we may define mind 
by positive qualities, all of them known to us, 
because we have constant experience of them. 
We may define it as possessing consciousness, 
intelligence, conscience, emotion, will. The fact 
is, that, being immediately conscious of mind and 
its varied actings from hour to hour, and minute 
to minute, we know more of mind than we know 
of matter. True, we do not possess a perfect knowl- 
edge of man’s mental, any more than of his corpo- 
real, nature. We do not know and cannot be 
expected to know it, as the God who made it 
knows it: still we have in consciousness a means, 
and this an immediate means, of knowing so much 
of its nature and properties, as thinking, feeling, 
desiring, willing. 

3. As matter cannot be resolved into mind on the 
one hand, so mind cannot be resolved into matter 
on the other. ‘There have been attempts made by 
ingenious metaphysicians, as by Bishop Berkeley 
and by Fichte, so to refine matter as to leave little 
but the name: itis represented either as an idea 
created by the Divine Mind, to be viewed by the 
created mind, or as a projection of the human 


mind itself. There is also a school of physical 
5* 


106 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 


speculators in the present day, who are seeking to 
spiritualize matter by stripping it of some of its dis- 
tinguishing properties, such as its extension or its 
occupation of space. With them matter is merely 
a name for certain powers, mechanical, chemical, 
or electric, which are supposed to produce all the 
phenomena falling under the senses. This refined 
view of body, though supported by names of repute, 
seems to be inconsistent with that immediate and 
intuitive knowledge which we possess of it, as not 
only exercising dynamical powers, but as extended 
and solid. But while opposing all attempts to resolve 
matter into mind, I would also set myself against 
the attempt to resolve mind into matter. By our 
primitive cognitions, we know matter as extended, 
solid, divisible, and exercising such qualities as 
attraction and repulsion; but we also know self as 
perceiving, judging, reasoning, devising, hating, 
fearing, loving. 

To those who would aver that mind may be merely 
a modification af matter, I reply, frst, that the two 
are made known to us by different organs: we know 
the one, matter, by the senses; we know the other, 
mind, by self-consciousness. No man ever saw a 
thought, touched an emotion, or heard a volition. 
Nor are we conscious, within the thinking mind, of 
space occupied, or hardness, or color. We reply, 
secondly, and more particularly, that we know them 
as possessed of essenttally different properties: we 
know the one as occupying space and exercising cer- 
tain attractive powers; whereas we know the other 


MIND AND BODY DIFFERENT. 107 


as capable of judgment, purpose, and affection. If 
any one will maintain that, notwithstanding these 
differences, the two can be reduced to one, the bur- 
den of proof lies upon him. And I have never 
found the materialist advancing any evidence which 
can stand a sifting scrutiny. He has not demon- 
strated, and I believe it is impossible for him to 
demonstrate, that any modification of mere matter— 
be it electric, nervous, or whatever else — can yield 
those peculiar phenomena of which we are con- 
scious in the thinking and feeling mind; can give 
intelligence and choice, and the perception of the 
distinction between good and evil; or those lofty 
affections and heroic resolutions which constitute the 
noblest characteristics of humanity. 

I have never found those materialists who profess 
to explain mental action by material forces so much 
as having a clear idea of the thing to be explained. 
The physiologist may, by the study of the nerves 
and brain, come to know what the nerves and brain 
are, and has shown that they are soft, pulpy sub- 
stances, with a certain chemical composition. He 
has tried to show that electricity will explain all the 
properties of the nerves, and in this he has hitherto 
been unsuccessful ; for while electricity travels along 
a tied nerve, the nervous fluid does not. But though 
he should be successful, he would not thereby en- 
lighten us on the subject of intellect or volition: 
he might show under what physiological conditions 
they arise, but would not thereby throw light on the 
intellect and volition themselves. Let us suppose 


108 NATURAL THEOLOGY 


that an electric force runs along a pulpy substance, 
the nerve, till it reaches another pulpy substance, the 
brain, still we have not thereby explained that essen- 
tially different phenomenon which we call thought, 
or that other phenomenon which we call wzd7. An 
electric force is one thing, and the ingenious thought 
of Faraday in speculating on that force is an entirely 
different thing. An affection of the pulpy substance, 
the brain, is one thing ; and the determination of the 
mind to resist temptation, the determination of Jo- 
seph, for example, when he said, “Can I do this great 
wickedness and sin against God?” is an entirely 
different thing. To confound them is to confound 
things which, so far from being the same, have not 
even a common point of resemblance. The physiol- 
ogist can explain, in a curious manner at times, how 
certain thoughts and feelings arise; but after all he 
has left the essential point untouched: he has not 
explained, nay, he has not so much as attempted to 
explain, thought itself, or volition, or emotion. 

In a later Lecture we must subject Materialism to 
a thorough examination. Meanwhile, I am estab- 
lishing principles as a preparation for reviewing the 
prevalent systems of the day. All that I have said 
has been allowed clearly and unequivocally by 
Professor Tyndall.* “The passage from the phys- 
ics of the brain to the corresponding facts of con- 
sciousness is unthinkable. Granted that a definite 
thought and a definite molecular action in the brain 
occur simultaneously, we do not possess the intel- 


* Address before British Association, Aug. 1868. 


IFYNDALL’S TESTIMONY. 10g 


lectual organ, nor apparently any rudiment of the 
organ, which would enable us to pass by a process 
of reasoning from the one phenomenon to the other. 
They appear together, but we do not know why. 
Were our minds and senses so expanded, strength- 
ened, and illuminated as to enable us to see and feel 
the very molecules of the brain; were we capable 
of following all their motions, all their groupings, 
all their electric discharges, if such there be, and 
were we intimately connected with the correspond- 
ing states of thought and feeling, —we should prob- 
ably be as far as ever from the solution of the 
problem, How are these physical processes con- 
nected with the facts of consciousness? The chasm 
between the two classes of phenomena would still 
remain intellectually impassable. Let the conscious 
ness of love, for example, be associated with a right 
handed spiral motion of the molecules of the brain, 
and the consciousness of hate with a left-handed 
spiral motion: we should then know when we love, 
that the motion is in one direction, and when we hate, 
the motion is in another direction; but the Why 
would still remain unanswered.” Iam not prepared 
to accept all the phraseology employed in this pas- 
sage about the phenomena being “associated” and 
“appearing together,” and about the “how” and 
the “why.” We shall show that mind obeys laws 
of its own very different from those of matter. As 
to the “how” and the “why,” they are in the end 
referred by this whole school to the region of the 
unknowable, and they may assert that, though we 


IIO NATURAL THEOLOGY. 


cannot discover the “how” and the “why,” after all 
thinking may be material. But it is admitted that 
we are conscious of thought and feeling, of love 
and hate, and this is enough for my present purpose. 
The consideration of the more subtle materialism 
that might be consistent with Mr. Tyndall’s state- 
ment must be reserved to a future Lecture. 

Il. THE NEXT QUESTION IS, WHAT DOES THE 
MIND REVEAL TO us? And, here, in order to set- 
tle what realities we have, we must first be rid of 
certain counterfeits. For we are met at this point 
by ghosts, which have been walking abroad in the 
darkness. I have been seeking for years past to 
scare them away, but have not succeeded, for there 
are still persons believing in them and frightening 
us with them; and it is the law of the life of errors, 
as it is the law of the life of ghosts, that, as long as 
men believe in them, they will appear: the demand 
brings the supply; the eye that is looking for them 
will certainly see them. 

I hold, very strenuously, that man is so consti- 
tuted that he can attain knowledge, that he can 
know things. I maintain that. man’s intelligent 
acts begin with his knowing things. By the 
senses he knows things: his own bodily frame as 
affected by all the senses; a solid body by the 
muscular sense, and a colored surface by the eye. 
We also know things by self-consciousness, or 
the inward sense: we know self as thinking, feel- 
ing or willing —as at this moment pleased or not 
pleased with this Lecture. I have studiously chosen 


migoiGtit ty OF “RHING IN ITSELF.” It 


my words. In using them, I do not mean that we 
know simply thinking, feeling, or willing: these 
have no separate or independent existence, — have 
no existence apart from self thinking, feeling, or 
willing, — are in fact mere abstractions. What 
we know is self thinking, feeling, willing; not self 
apart from these operations, but self in these opera- 
tions. This may seem too nice a distinction; but 
it is the only expression which unfolds the full 
truth. A man is not conscious of thinking apart 
from self, any more than he is conscious of self 
apart from thinking, or some other exercise. It 
appears, then, that, both by the outward and the 
inward sense, we begin with knowledge, with the 
knowledge of things. 

But I hear some one asking in astonishment, 
Do you really mean to say that you know the 
thing, — the thing in itself ? Itis said of Scotchmen, 
whether justly or not I will not take it upon. myself 
to say — for I am not altogether impartial in speak- 
ing of Scotchmen — but, truly or falsely, it is 
alleged of Scotchmen that, when asked a sharp 
question, they are apt to puta sharp question in 
return. I am inclined to use the Scotchman’s privi- 
lege on this occasion, and inquire, What do you 
mean by a ¢hing in zttself? The phrase is a 
German one, the translation of Ding an sich, so 
frequently used by Kant, and with which so many 
have been conjuring of late years. What a thing 
means, I know; and I hold that, in every exercise 
of the senses, we know the thing, this body or that 





~ 


II2 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 


body ; and that in every exercise of self-conscious- 
ness we know the thing itself, that is, ourselves 
in a particular state. But what is meant by the 
thing in itself 1 do not know; and, think it proper 
not to affect to know. Does it mean that, besides 
the thing we know, there is something else, —a 
thing plus itself? ‘This ztself, in addition to the 
thing, I confess I do not know; and, as knowing 
nothing of it, | have no faith in its existence, and 
I do not see any purpose to be served by it. If it 
mean that the thing is within the thing, I have 
about as clear a notion of what is signified as I 
have of the whale that swallowed itself, or of the 
Kilkenny cats which ate one another all but the 
tails. Maintaining that we know the thing, I give 
up the zz ztse/f to metaphysicians as a ghost to 
be believed in, or not believedein, just as they 
please. 

But then it is declared, gravely and pompously, 
by men who look as if they were possessed of all ° 
wisdom, that we do not know things, but phe- 
nomena; that is, appearances. And if, by this, they 
mean that we can know things only so far as they 
manifest themselves to us, I admit it: it is a truth; 
itis a truism. We know things only so far as they 
appear unto us. A man without eyes cannot see; 
without hearing, cannot hear. But then it is ¢he 
“things which manifest themselves unto us that we 
know. An appearance without a thing appearing 
is inconceivable, is an impossibility. Even a cloud, 
appearing has something, is something: it is moist- 


MATTER AND MIND ARE SUBSTANCES. 113 


ure in a vaporous state; and, were we to enter it, it 
would leave some of its sprinklings upon us. A 
shadow, even, is a something: it implies a dense 
body obstructing light, and keeping it from falling 
on a defined surface. An image in a mirror is 
something: it requires glass and quicksilver, and 
rays of light and aneye. In one of Longfellow’s 
works, there is a dispute as to whether the narcissus, 
or its shadow reflected in the water, is the reality. 
The dispute can be settled. Both have a reality: 
the one in a solid plant, the other in rays of light 
coming from the plant and thence reflected. J admit 
that we know phenomena, and only phenomena, 
but this in the sense of things appearing. 

But then it is said, Surely, you do not pretend 
that you know matter and mind as substances ? 
Before replying,:I have once more to insist that it 
be explained what is meant by the phrase. Accord- 
ing to Locke, and English metaphysicians, it means 
something lying under, underneath, or behind the 
thing known. Locke says, Hamilton says, that 
this something is unknown and unknowable. Now, 
I am prepared to give up this substance beneath 
the thing, even as I gave up the zz ztself, which 
some place within the thing. ‘This addition is sup- 
posed to be a substratum or support. But I am 
not sure that the thing, say mind or body, needs 
any such support. I cannot see that this shadowy 
thing, unknown and unknowable, cloud or abyss, 
or pit or darkness, is fitted as a substratum to bear 
up mind and body, which may require nothing else 


II4 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 


to uphold them as a substratum, beyond the powers 
with which God has endowed them. 

But while I am ready to dispense with this under- 
support, as an intermeddler which would separate 
us from things, I maintain very resolutely that mind 
and body are entitled, not by the aid of any thing 
else, but of themselves, to be regarded as sub- 
stances. And if some one pay me back in my own 
coin, and ask me what I mean by substance, I am 
prepared to answer. ‘There are three things in- 
volved in substance: First, it has being; or, to speak 
more plainly, the thing exists. Secondly, it has 
potency; that is, power to act. Thirdly, it has a 
permanence, or a certain continuance and endur- 
ance, — such an abiding nature that it is not created 
by our looking at it; nor does it cease to exist 
because we have ceased to contemplate it. What- 
ever possesses these three qualities, I call a sub- 
stance. Both mind and matter are known as 
possessing them. Mind, that is self, is known, 
first, as having existence or being. We thus know 
it in every act of self-consciousness. True, we 
can say little about bare being or existence; but 
this not because we do not know it, but because it 
is so simple. About complicated objects we can 
say a great deal — for instance, about the Roman 
empire, and modern civilization, and the constitu- 
tion of the United States — because of their many 
elements and relations. But we can say little of 
such things as pain and pleasure and self, not be- 
cause we do not know them, but because every one 


CHARACTERISTICS OF SUBSTANCE. 115 


knows them, and they cannot be made clearer by a 
description: they involve no composition, and are 
not made up of ingredients. 


‘¢ Who thinks of asking if the sun is light, 
Observing that it lightens?” 


Those who attempt any thing more, and to peer 
into the object, will find that the light (like that of 
the sun) darkens as they gaze upon it. “When I 
burned in desire to question them farther, they 
made themselves — air, into which they vanished.” 
Again, we know mind as having potency or power ; 
as influencing other things, and being influenced 
by other things; as exercising power over its own 
thoughts and over the bodily frame. Once more: 
I know it as so far permanent and independent that 
it is nota mere momentary or ephemeral impres- 
sion or idea; it is not created by my looking at it; 
it existed prior to my observing it, andit was because 
it did so, that I was able to observe it; and it does 
not cease to exist because I have ceased to view 
it. The mind (like the body) having these three 
attributes, — being, potency, and permanence, — is 
to be regarded as a substance. 

It is necessary to establish these points; for, ever 
since the days of David Hume, and especially in 
these days of revived scepticism, the subtlest form 
of infidelity proceeds on the denial of them. The 
denial is defended by metaphysicists, and is eagerly 
seized by physicists, who are no philosophers, but 
who are anxious to have a philosophy to serve their 


116 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 


purpose. The whole school which I am opposing 
are defenders of the 


DOCTRINE OF NESCIENCE. 


It is called Nescience, in so far as it holds that 
man knows nothing, and can know nothing of the 
nature of things; and Nihilism, inasmuch as it 
is averred that there can be nothing known. It is 
acknowledged that we are cognizant of appear- 
‘ances; but then we do not and never can know 
whether these correspond to realities. This doc- 
trine is commonly attributed to M. Comte; but the 
true author of it is my countryman, David Hume. 
Hume is commonly called the sceptic, and he did 
not repudiate the name; but the epithet scarcely 
characterizes him. He did not profess to deny the 
existence of God, or any thing else. He was evi- 
dently painfully affected, when the French Ency- 
clopedists claimed him as an atheist. When the 
pert Mrs. Mallet came to him, and said: “We 
deists ought to know one another,” he replied 
sternly (so differently from his usual good-nature) : 
“Who told you that I was a deist?” His professed 
aim was to show that man can never know any _ 
thing of the nature of things, —can never reach 
philosophic truth, certainly never theological truth. 
Huxley very properly sets aside Comte as the 
founder of this school of philosophy. “So far as I 
am concerned, the most reverend prelate might 
dialectically hew M. Comte in pieces as a modern 
Agag, and I would not attempt to stay his hand. 


DOCTRINE OF NESCIENCE. 117 


In so far as my study of what specially character- 
izes the Positive Philosophy has led me, I find 
therein little or nothing of any scientific value, and 
a great deal which is thoroughly antagonistic to 
the very essence of science as any thing in Ultra- 
montane Catholicism.” The secret truth is, that 
the British followers of Comte do not like him; 
because, feeling that he himself and mankind gen- 
erally need to have a faith anda worship, he busied 
himself, in-his later days, in constructing a religion 
of his own, which is certainly sufficiently ludicrous, 
but is after all a reproach on those who have no 
religion. Mr. Huxley claims to install Hume as 
the founder and head of the philosophy which he 
adopts, and which I am inclined to call Humism. 
Hume says: “All the perceptions of the human 
mind resolve themselves into two distinct kinds of 
impressions and ideas.”* He begins with impres- 
sions and ideas, — momentary impressions and 
ideas, — and not with things, and he declares, very 
properly, that out of these he can draw no realities. 
I meet this by showing that the mind commences, 
not with mere impressions and ideas, but with the 
knowledge of things; and on this primary knowl- 

* “The difference betwixt these consists in the degree of 
force and liveliness with which they strike upon the mind, and 
make their way into our thought or consciousness: ‘Those per 
ceptions which enter with most force and violence we may name 
impressions; and under this name I comprehend all our sensa- 
tions, passions, and emotions, as they make their first appear 
ance in the soul. By ideas, I mean the faint images of these in 


thinking and reasoning.” — Opening of Treatise of Human 
Nature. 


IIS NATURAL THEOLOGY. 


edge it builds other and higher. And if I am 
asked for the proof, I answer that J have the same 
evidence of it as I have of the existence of impres- 
sions and ideas. I never do know an impression, 
except as an impression of self, the thing impressed ; 
and, in doing so, | know both the impression and 
the thing impressed. I am never conscious of an 
idea except as an idea entertained by me. The 
two ever go together; and if I allow the existence 
of the one, I must allow the existence of the other: 
the one is as certain as the other; the one has the 
same self-evidence as the other. He who builds 
on any other foundation is building, not on the 
rock, not even on the sand, but on a surface of 
waters, or in the fleeting clouds. He who adopts 
the fundamental principle, that the mind does not 
start with the knowledge of things, must take all 
the rest. He must go through with it, even though 
it should carry and leave him where it left Hume; 
that is, in inextricable thickets and sinking swamps, 
in which he must wander on for ever, without com- 
ing to a termination: taking now this road, and now 
that road, to find them all “passages which lead 
to nothing ;” beginning nowhere, and ending no- 
where, crossing and recrossing, as the children of 
Israel did in their wanderings, but with no Canaan 
remaining for him as a place of rest. 


DOCTRINE OF RELATIVITY. 


x, 
ve 


Closely allied to this doctrine of Nescience, 
springing out of it or leading to it, is that of 


- 


DOCTRINE OF RELATIVITY. II1g 


the Relativity of Knowledge; that is, that the mind 
does not perceive things, but the relations of things, 
of things utterly unknown. Grote thinks that this 
was the doctrine of Protagoras, the old Greek 
sophist, when he maintained that “man is the 
measure of all things.” Now, I do not reject 
this doctrine because it was held by the sophists: 
I reject it because it is sophistic in the expression 
and defence of it. I reject it as so far untrue. I 
am not bound to accept it because it has been held 
‘by men whom I profoundly revere: such as Sir 
William Hamilton, of Edinburgh; Dr. Ulrici, of 
Halle; and Dr. Mansel, of Oxford. On Hamilton’s 
publishing the doctrine in his “ Discussions on Phi- 
losophy,” I examined it in the Appendix to a new 
edition of my work on the “ Divine Government ;” 
and Hamilton meant to reply, but was prevented by 
infirmities terminating in his death. I labored to 
show that it was not agreeable to consciousness, 
and that it would certainly lead to fatal conse- 
quences. I was one.of the first to protest, which 
I did in an article in the “North British Review” 
(Feb. 1859), against Dr. Mansel’s application of 
the doctrine, in his famous Bampton Lectures on 
the “Limits of Religious Thought,” to the defence 
of Religion, Natural and Revealed. Dr. Mansel 
thought to employ it to undermine Rationalism ; but, 
’ in doing so, he undermined as well the ground on 
which religion stands — some one describes him as 
going out with a scythe to cut off the legs of others, 
and succeeding in cutting off his own legs. Mr 


I20 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 


Mill, as we might expect, has accepted the doc- 
trine, only complaining that Hamilton does not 
carry it out consistently and consecutively. But 
people did not see the consequences till Herbert 
Spencer laid his whole system upon it as upona 
bottomless abyss. Itis a principle adopted by the 
whole school, and employed by them to undermine 
all higher truth, philosophic and theological. We 
have seen that Tyndall, when sore pressed with a 
difficulty about life and mind coming out of the 
incandescent star dust, seeks to extricate himself 
by appealing to “the law of relativity, which plays 
so important a part in modern philosophy.” 

The doctrine so designated takes as many shapes 
as Proteus; and when we would seize it in one form 
it takes another, and so eludes our grasp. It has, 
however, a true shape; and, when it takes this, we 
have only to commend it. There is a sense, or 
rather there are senses, in which man’s knowledge 
is relative. First, he can know only so far as he 
has a capacity of knowing. In this sense, man’s 
knowledge is all relative to himself. A man who 
has no eyes cannot know color; who has no ears 
cannot know sounds. ‘There is the farther truth 
that man has the capacity of discovering relations 
between himself and other things, and between one 
thing and another. ‘There is a third doctrine which 
is also true, that man’s knowledge is finite: he can- 
not know all things; he cannot know all about any 
one thing. This, however, is not a doctrine of 
relativity : it is the old doctrine of man’s knowledge 


DOCTRINE OF RELATIVITY. I21 


being finite and not infinite, so earnestly inculcated 
by the Fathers of the Church, and by the profound- 
est divines and philosophers of modern times. So 
far we have truths, and truths of some importance, 
though the phrase Relativity is scarcely the word 
by which to express them. 

But this solid truth is employed as a means of 
gathering round it other and tenebrous matter, —as 
the cuttle-fish, when we would catch it, surrounds 
itself with inky darkness. The doctrine, as inter- 
preted by its defenders, means that we know rela- 
tions and not things; and, in the case of some, that 
it is the mind that creates the relations, and that it 
adds the relation out of its own stores. When it 
can be made to take and to keep this shape, I seize 
it at once. This doctrine must issue logically in 
Nescience. Relations between things unknown can 
never yield knowledge. But I condemn it, not for 
its consequences, but because it is untrue, because 
it is inconsistent with consciousness. 

It is inconceivable that we should know relations 
between things unknown. A relation is the aspect 
of things towards each other: the Greeks desig- 
nated it by moog w. If the things were to cease, there 
would be no relation; and if thé things were 
unknown, there would be no relations known. 
Gravitation is a relation of one body to another, say 
between the sun and the-earth; but if there were 
no sun and no earth, there would be no such rela- 
tion, and if the sun and earth were unknown to 
me, I could never know a relation between them. 

6 


I22 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 


A relation is a relation of things known, —so far 
known, — known gua that relation. We know that 
we are related to our fellow-men, because we know 
what we are, and what our fellow-men are. We 
know in what relation we stand to God, because 
we so far know God and know ourselves. 

The settlement of these points will be found to 
have a more direct bearing than might at first appear 
upon our argument. If man’s soul be material, we 
have really no ground on which to proceed in infer- 
ring that there is a spiritual God. ‘The subtlest form 
of infidelity in our day proceeds on the principle 
that man knows nothing of the nature or reality of 
things, or that he can know nothing except rela- 
tions between things unknown. It no longer takes 
the form of rationalism, pretending to discover truth 
which in fact revelation has made known, and in 
the end setting itself above revelation: it makes 
human reason proclaim that it cannot discover any 
truth beyond and above the phenomena of sentient 
experience. It does not just deny that there is a 
God, —this, it says, would be unphilosophical, — 
but it declares that God, if there be a God, is and 
must be unknown. It does not say that man has 
not a soul; but it identifies that soul with the body, 
and thus leaves no evidence that the soul may live 
after the body dies. It is of course unreasonable 
to seek after this unknowable God if haply we may 
find him, or to imagine that we are bound to pay 
him worship, or that we have any duties to discharge 
towards him; and as to the other world, if there be 


DOCTRINE OF RELATIVITY. 123 


another world, we may not draw from it any fears 
of punishment or hopes of blessedness. In meet- 
ing this fundamental scepticism, we need to stand 
up for the veracity of the human faculties, and to 
show that the same powers which guide correctly 
in the business of life and in the pursuits of science 
are legitimately fitted to conduct to a reasonable 
belief in One presiding over the works of nature 
and providentially guiding our lot. ‘This baldest of 
all the philosophies, which have sprung up in our 
world, is requiring reason to abnegate one of its 
indefeasible rights, is cutting the root which sup- 
ports man’s most aspiring hopes, is denying to the 
soul its highest exercises, is shearing it of its chief 
glories. It is unlawfully circumscribing that noble 
view which reason opens, and laboring to keep man 
gazing for ever on the ground like the beast, when 
his destiny is to look out on that distant horizon and 
upward to the glories of heaven. 


V. 


MENTAL PRINCIPLES INVOLVED IN THE THEISTIC ARGUMENT. 
— OuR IDEAS LEAD US TO BELIEVE IN GOD AND CLOTHE 
HIM WITH POWER, PERSONALITY, GOODNESS, AND INFIN- 
ITY. — GOD SO FAR KNOWN. — CRITICISM OF MR. HERBERT 
SPENCER. — GOD SO FAR UNKNOWN. 


Gy these Lectures I have been looking first at the 
physical world as it is regarded by modern 
science. But the physical facts do not show that 
there is a God, unless we take along with them cer- 
tain general principles. This induced me in my last 
Lecture to turn to Mental Science, when I showed, 
first, that the mind exists; and, secondly, that it has 
the capacity of acquiring knowledge. Iam now to 
show that, in the exercise of this its capacity, it can 
rise to the knowledge of God and clothe him with 
infinite perfections.* | 
Let us understand what I maintain in regard to 
man’s capacity of knowledge. I hold that he has a 
power of intuition; that is, of looking directly on 
things without him and things within. But I cer- 


* In this Lecture I have used the principles established in my 
work on the ‘‘Intuitions of the Mind,” to which I refer those 
who may wish to see the foundation on which I build more fully 
discussed. 


MAN KNOWS THINGS. 125 


tainly do not stand sponsor for such innate ideas as 
Locke exposed till they perished with no one to 
protect them. Nor do I defend those a prior¢ forms 
which the mind, according to Kant, imposes on 
things, giving to things what is not in the things, or 
announcing beforehand what things are, or what 
they should be. Out of these a Zrzord forms, cate- 
gories, and ideas, able men in Germany constructed 
in the last age a solemn and ambitious speculative 
philosophy, which has had its brief season in Britain 
and America, and may still be seen lingering among 
us, like venerable gray locks on the heads of men 
above fifty. But, like the foliage in the fall, it has 
faded into the “sere and yellow leaf;” and, though 
still shining in gorgeous colors, its destiny is to 
die; when, as it contains some elements of truth, it 
may help, I hope, to form a fruitful soil, — so differ- 
ent from a barren sensationalism, — out of which 
something better may spring. What I stand up for 
is a much less proud and pretentious thing: it is not 
a form to be imposed or superinduced on things, but 
a power of looking at things. This knowledge is, 
at first, only of individual things, — of things in the 
concrete, as they present themselves. But out of 
this it can draw great abstract and general truths, 
rising out of great depths and mounting to great 
heights, constituting a body of philosophy based on 
the earth, but towering to heaven. It is because 
we have this original knowledge that we can add 
to it derived knowledge. Having this acquaintance 
with individual things, we can rise to general laws 


126 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 


about things. Having begun with realities, not with 
mere impressions, ideas, and phenomena, all that 
we reach by the abstracting, generalizing process 
is also real; and this not only a reality in thought, 
but, thought being rightly conducted, a reality in 
things. 

And, among other things which we thus perceive 
directly and intuitively, I hold that there is Power; 
not Power in the abstract, but things exercising 
Power. This gives the principle of Cause and 
Effect. I know that I have come to a keenly 
agitated question. It is acknowledged on all. hands 
that the law of universal causation is sanctioned by 
an enlarged experience. It is confessed to be the 
widest law which the mind of man has reached. 
No exceptions have been found to it, in any part at 
least of the physical universe, near or far. But 
some of us maintain that it is more; that it is a con- 
viction of our mental nature, not a conviction above 
objective things, but a conviction in regard to things. 
I hold, our consciousness witnessing thereto, that we 
perceive things, both within and without us, not 
merely as having existence, but as having potency. 
We cannot know directly any object without us, 
except as having power upon us. When we act, 
we are exercising power. Potency, or property of 
some kind, is an essential element of things as known 
to us. When a thing is known to me, I know it, 
not as an impression, an idea, a bare phenomenon: 
I know it as exercising power on me or some other 
thing. Thus knowing power intuitively, we are 


PRINCIPLE OF CAUSE AND EFFCT. BB 7/ 


constrained to connect an effect, a thing effected, 
with a thing having power to produce it. 

But how does all this bear, it may be asked, on the 
religious question? J answer, Much in every way. 
Our knowledge of mind is needed, in addition to 
our knowledge of matter, as a complement to make 
up our knowledge of God. In particular, the prin- 
ciple of cause and effect supplies the zewus which 
connects God with his works. We have seen in 
previous Lectures, that everywhere, all throughout 
the Cosmos and throughout the AZons, there is an 
adaptation of one thing to another, of every part to 
every other, of the part to the whole, and of the 
whole to every part. This shows that there has 
been a disposition and an arrangement, —in short, a 
thing effected; and this entitles us, on the principle 
of cause and effect, to argue that there must have 
been a cause. It has the guarantee of the observa- 
tion of external nature, which goes as far as obser- 
vation can go in establishing a universal law. But 
it has a higher certitude —the guarantee of a men- 
tal principle looking to the very nature of things, and 
entitling us to argue, not merely within our expe- 
rience, but beyond it, as to things in general and 
everywhere, that an effect must have a cause; not 
only that this watch has had a watch-maker, but 
that this orderly constructed world has had a world- 
maker. 

If we had not a Spiritual Nature ourselves, we 
could not rise to the contemplation of God, who is 
a Spirit. Were we incapacitated for knowledge, we 


128 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 


could not mount to the knowledge and contempla- 
tion of God. Did we not know ourselves as sub- 
stances, we never could ascend to the knowledge 
of God as a substance. But, from the nature of the 
effects of which we are conscious within ourselves, 
we ascend to the recognition of a cause adequate to 
produce them. Having ourselves a spiritual nature, 
we conceive of God as aspirit. As having a sense, 
or rather cognition, of power in ourselves, we are 
led to clothe with power the Being from whom we 
have sprung. If we believe that the God who made 
the eye does himself see, we must also believe that 
he who gave us our knowing powers must himself. 
know. 

It is in the same way that we rise to a belief in 
the Personality of God. Some of those who have 
been fixed in the grasping vice of the metaphysics 
of Kant have been sorely troubled with this ques- 
tion; and others, who picture God as unknowable, 
have taken advantage of their perplexities. We | 
may be “ persons,” they say; but then it is because 
we are finite. Personality, they urge, implies lim- 
itation. It is not difficult, I think, to solve this 
puzzle. We have an intuitive knowledge each one 
of himself as a person distinct from every other 
person and from the world. Kant, without mean- 
ing it, led the whole of German philosophy into a 
wide waste of pantheism by not allotting to person- 
ality a place among the original cognitions of the 
mind, —as he unfortunately called them “forms of 
the mind.” Having a knowledge of ourselves as 


PERSONALITY AND GOODNESS OF GOD. 129 


persons, we can rise to the contemplation of God as 
a person, of God as different from his works. It is 
true that we are limited in our personality as in 
every thing else: it does not follow that God is lim- 
ited in his personality or any thing else. True, if 
We insist on saying that “God is all, and that all is 
God,” we cannot give him personality; but then 
this is pantheism. And this consciousness which 
we have of our personality 1s the truth which under- 
mines pantheism. Iam conscious of self as a per- 
son different from the universe, different from God; 
so that God cannot be all, nor can all be God. But 
God, while he is a person different from his works, 
may be possessed of power, wisdom, goodness, to 
which no limits can be set. 

But man has higher perceptions than these; and 
they enable him to clothe the Divine Being with 
still higher perfections. In looking at the voluntary 
acts of intelligent beings, he perceives that they 
may be good or that they may be evil: he sees that 
gratitude is good, and that cruelty is evil. Let us 
evolve what is involved in this idea. The good per- 
ceived implies that we are under obligation to attend 
to it; and the evil, that we are under obligation to 
avoid it. And being under obligation does seem to 
imply that we are under obligation to a Power, or 
rather a Being who will call us to account. This 
seems to point to God as the Moral Governor, and at 
last to be the Judge of the Universe. This is the 
only argument for the Divine existence which seemed 


conclusive to Kant, the great German metaphysi- 
6* 


130 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 


cian. It is the argument that seemed the strong- 
est to the eloquent Scottish Theologian Chalmers. 
I am not sure that, taken by itself, it is sufficient to 
prove the existence of a living Being above the 
world, its Maker and Preserver. But there is no 
need of taking it by itself. Combining it with the 
argument from design, it proves that the God who 
lives and rules in this world is possessed of moral 
excellence. We are sure that he who planted the 
moral sense within us must approve of the good 
which it would lead us to approve of, and condemn 
the evil which it would lead us to condemn. 

I am quite aware of the process by which persons 
endeavor to avoid the point of this argument. ‘They 
would account for these moral feelings of ours by 
the association of ideas, which exercises some sort 
of chemical power upon our ideas, and transmutes 
ideas got from sense into ideas of moral good. 
Now, in opposition to this, I hold that the laws of 
association are the mere laws of the succession of 
our ideas and attached feelings, and can generate 
no new idea without a special inlet from without or 
capacity within. Association cannot give a man 
born blind the least idea of color, and as little can 
it produce any other idea. By mixing the colors 
of yellow and blue, the hand could produce green: 
but give a person the idea of yellow and the idea 
of blue, and from the two he could not manufacture 
the idea of green; still less could he, from these 
sensations or any others, form such ideas as those 
of moral good and evil. Take the perception of 


IDEAS NOT GOT BY ASSOCIATION. beg 


conscience, that deceit is asin. ‘Take the convic- 
tion, that we are not at liberty to tell a lie, when we 
might be tempted to do so. Take the judgment, 
that the person who has committed the act is guilty, 
condemnable, punishable. ‘Take the feeling of re- 
morse which rises when we contemplate ourselves 
as having told a falsehood. ‘Take the very peculiar 
and profound ideas denoted by the phrases “ obliga- 
tion,” “ought,” “blameworthy.” We have here a 
series of mental phenomena quite as real, and quite 
as worthy of being looked at, as our very sensations 
or ideas of pleasure and pain. 

Give us mere sensations, say of sounds or colors 
or forms, or of pleasure and pain, and they will 
never be any thing else, in the reproduction of 
them, than the ideas of sounds, colors, forms, pleas- 
ures, or pains; unless, indeed, there be some new 
power introduced, and this new element, in itself or 
in Conjunction with the sensations, be fitted to pro- 
duce a new idea, and that very idea. The process 
by which some affect to generate our moral beliefs 
is like that of the old alchemists, who, when they 
put earth into the retort, never could get any thing 
but earth, and who could get gold only by surrepti- 


tiously introducing some substance containing gold. 


The philosopher’s stone of this psychology is of» 


the same character as that employed in mediava. 
physics. If they put in sensations only, as some 
do, they never have any thing but sensations; and 
a “dirt philosophy,” as it has been called, is the 
product. If gold is got, it can only be because it 


” 


132 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 


has been quietly introduced by the person who 
exhibits it. Provided we had the ideas, the laws 
of association might show how they could be brought 
up again; and how, in the reproduction, certain 
parts might sink into shadow and neglect, while 
others came forth into light and prominence; and 
how the whole feeling, by the confluence of differ- 
ent ideas, might be wrought into a glow of inten- 
sity: but the difficulty of generating the ideas, such 
ideas, ideas so full of meaning, is not thereby sur- 
mounted. The idea I have of pain is one thing, 
and the idea I have of deceit — that it is morally evil, 
condemnable, deserving of pain —is an entirely dif- 
ferent thing, our consciousness being witness. On 
the supposition that there is a chemical power, as 
is alleged, in association to create such ideas as 
those of duty and merit, sin and demerit, this chem- 
ical power would be a native moral power; not the 
product of sensations, but a power above them, and 
fitted to transmute them from the baser into the 
golden substance, and would entitle us to clothe 
that Being, who had given us such power, with the 
moral qualities with which he has endowed us. 

But then it is urged that all that you have said 
does not prove that this Being, whom you have thus 
clothed with power and goodness, is the Infinite 
God. I admit this at once. No one ever said that 
it does. ‘The physical works of God in the earth 
and heavens can never furnish proof of any thing 
more than the large, the immense, the indefinite, 
—not the infinite. To argue otherwise would be 


INFINITY OF GOD. 130 


placing in the conclusion what is not in the prem- 
ises. If we would clothe God with infinity, we 
must look within to our perceptions and belief as 
to infinity. 

I feel that I am approaching a profound subject. 
It is not easy to sound its depths. It was long 
before I was able to attain any thing like clear 
ideas on the subject. I have pondered for many 
successive hours on it, only to find it shrouding 
itself in deeper mystery. On the one hand, I found 
the more profound philosophers of the continent of 
Europe giving this idea of the Infinite a high place, 
indeed the highest place, in their systems. In 
coming back from flights in company with the 
German metaphysicians, to inquire of British phi- 
losophers what they make of this idea, I found their 
views meagre and unsatisfactory ; for the idea of the 
infinite, according to them, is a mere negation, a 
mere impotency. But if we can entertain no such 
idea, how do all men speak of it? Ifit be a mere 
impotency, how do we come to clothe the Divine 
Being with Infinity? 

Feeling as if I needed somewhere to find it, I 
proceed in the truly British or Baconian method 
to inquire, How does such an idea or belief in the 
infinite, as the mind actually has, rise within us, and 
what is its precise nature? The imagination can 
add and add: so far, we have the immense, the in- 
definite. Thus, in respect of time, it can add mill- 
ions of years or ages to millions of years and ages. 
In respect of extension, it can add millions and hill- 


134 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 


1ons and trillions of leagues to millions and bill- 
ions and trillions of leagues, and then multiply the 
results by each other, millions of billions of trillions 
of times. But when it has finished this process, it 
has not infinity: it has merelyimmensity. If, when 
we had gone thus far, time and space ceased, we 
should still have the finite, — a very wide finite, no 
doubt, but not the infinite. But it is a law of the 
mind that, when we have gone thus far, we are 
necessitated to believe that existence does not stop 
there, — nay, to believe that, to whatever other point 
we might go, there must be a something beyond. 
Suppose we were carried to such a point, would 
we not stretch out our hand, confidently believing 
that there 1s a space beyond, or that, if our hand be 
stayed, it must be by body occupying space? We 
are necessitated to believe that, after we have gone 
thus far, we are not at the outer edge of the uni- 
verse of being, — nay, though we were to multiply 
this distance by itself, and this by itself ten thou- 
sand millions of times, till the imagination felt itself 
dizzy, still, after we have reached this point, we 
are constrained to believe that there must be some- 
thing beyond. This seems to me to be the very 
law of the mind in reference to infinity: not only 
can it not set limits to existence, it is constrained to 
believe that there are no limits. “If the mind,” 
says John Foster, “were to arrive at the solemn 
ridge of mountains which we may fancy to bound 
creation, it would eagerly ask, Why no farther? 
what is beyond ?” 


PERFECTION OF GOD. 135 


But this is only one side of this idea and con- 
viction: the mind has another and a more impor- 
tant. We apprehend, and are constrained to believe, 
in regard to objects which we look upon as infinite, 
that they are incapable of increase or diminution. 
We represent to ourselves the Divine Being with 
certain attributes, — say, as wise or good, — and 
our belief as to Him and these attributes is, that 
he cannot be wiser or better. This aspect may 
be appropriately designated as the Perfect. This is 
the conviction of the Perfect of which so many pro- 
found philosophers make so much; but not more, 
as I think, than they are entitled todo. We think 
of God as having all his attributes such that no 
addition could be made, and we call such attributes 
his perfections. In regard to the moral attributes 
of Deity, it is this significant word Perfect, rather 
than infinite, which expresses the conviction we 
are led to entertain in regard, for example, to the 
wisdom, or benevolence, or righteousness of God. 
Join these two aspects, and we have such an 
idea as the finite mind of man can form of the 
infinite. The first of these views: tends to humble 
us, as showing how far our creature impotency is 
below Creator Power. The other has rather a 
tendency to elevate us by showing a perfect exem- 
plar. The Perfect shines above us like the sun 
in the heavens, distant and unapproachable, daz- 
zling and blinding us as we would gaze upon it; 
but still our eye ever tends to turn up towards it, 
and we feel that it is a blessed thing that there is 


136 ‘ NATURAL THEOLOGY. 


such a light, and that we are permitted to walk in 
it and rejoice in it. eal” 

This seems to be a necessary perception: we 
cannot be made to believe, to think otherwise. Not 
only so: it is in a sense a universal belief. No 
doubt the widest image formed by many human 
beings, as by children and savages, must be very 
narrow; but, whether narrow or wide, they always 
believe that there must be something beyond, and 
that this is incapable of augmentation. Pursue 
any line sufficiently far, and we shall find it going 
out into infinity. So true is it that 


The feeling of the boundless bounds 
All feeling as the welkin doth the world. 


But the infinite in which the mind is led intuitively 
to believe is not an abstract infinite. It is a belief 
in something infinite. When the visible things of 
God declare that there is an intelligent Being, the 
Author of all the order and adaptation in the uni- 
verse, we are impelled to believe that this Being 
is and must be infinite; and we clothe him with 
eternal power and godhead. ‘The intuition is 
gratified to the full in the contemplation of a 
God Eternal, Omnipresent, All Mighty, and All 
Perfect. 


Thus it is that I construct the argument for the 
existence of God; and the same considerations 
which prove that he is, prove that he has certain 
perfections. I do not stand up for a God-conscious- 
ness as a simple and single instinct gazing directly 


THE CONVICTION SPONTANEOUS. Lay 


on God. I maintain that there are a number and 
variety of native principles, each of which, being 
favored by external circumstances, would lead us 
up to God. Every deeper principle which guides 
us in the practical affairs of life, and in the pursuit 
of science, and in our obligations towards our fel- 
low-men, prompts us to look upward to a Being 
to whom we stand in the closest relationship. The 
law of cause and effect, the law of moral good, 
the striving after the idea of the infinite, these with 
the circumstances in which we are placed, with the 
traces of purpose and providence and retribution, 
with a generated sense of dependence, all, each in 
its own way, and all together would draw or drive 
our thoughts above nature to a supernatural power. 
All the living streams in our world, if we ascend 
them, conduct to the fountain. All the scattered 
rays show us the luminary. I find the materials of 
the argument in every work of God, and the strings 
that bind them in the laws or principles of knowl- 
edge, belief, and judgment. It gets its nutriment 
from objects, and it has its roots in the mind itself. 
The conviction springs up spontaneously in all 
minds. At the same time it may be repressed or it 
may be perverted, — by ignorance, by sinful stupid- 
ity, by lusts, by worldly engrossments; by pride, 
indisposing us to submit to restraints ; by our shrink- 
ing instinctively from condemnation. We can thus 
account for two things conjoined in the whole re- 
ligious history of mankind. We have in all ages, 
in all countries and states of society, a tendency to 


138 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 


believe in some sort of supernatural or divine power. 
There is no nation, in fact no individual, without 
some rudiment of religion. Some, indeed, have 
declared that they have found not only persons, but 
tribes, without religion. And this is true when by 
religion they mean a belief that would be accepted 
by civilized men, and involving a conception of a 
spiritual God. But more careful observers, able to 
search the.depths of the heart, have always found 
some vague apprehension of a being or a power sup- 
posed to be different from the natural elements, and 
fitted to raise up fear or hope.* But along with 


* In that curious conglomerate, Sir John Lubbock’s book, 
““On the Origin of Civilization and Primitive Condition of 
Man,” there is a heterogeneous collection of statements by travel- 
lers, historians, and missionaries, as to the religion and moral- 
ity of savage nations. Some of the authors quoted are not fitted 
to penetrate the depths of the human heart; yet there is a general 
concurrence as to some sort of religious faith or fear being found 
among the lowest tribes. The Australians ‘‘ possess certain vague 
ideas as to the existence of evil spirits and a general dread of 
witchcraft.” The Backapins, a Kaffir tribe, have no outward wor- 
ship, but ‘‘ they believe in sorcery and the efficacy of amulets.” 
The Indians of California had ‘‘ certain sorcerers whom they be- 
lieved to possess power over diseases, to bring small-pox, famine, 
&c., and of whom, therefore, they were in much fear.” The Hot- 
tentots have very vague ideas about a good spirit, but ‘‘ have 
much clearer notions about an evil spirit, whom they fear, believ- 
ing him to be the occasion of sickness, death, thunder, and every 
calamity that befalls them.” On Williams placing a Fijian before 
a mirror, he stood delighted, and saidsoftly, ‘‘ Now I can see into 
a world of spirits.” Sir John says that ‘‘certain phenomena, as, 
for instance, sleep and dreams, pain, disease, and death, have 
naturally created in the savage mind a belief in the existence 
of mysterious and invisible Beings.” This general tendency, ] 
add, must have a common cause in the nature of man. 


PERVERTED VIEWS OF GOD. 139 


this there is about as universal a disposition to per- 
vert and degrade the divine nature and character. 
Some, from ignorance and narrowness of view and 
heart, see God in only a small part of his work- 
manship; some only in certain of his gifts, as in 
rain and harvest; some, with a secret conscious- 
ness of sin, only in his judgments. The miscon- 
ception of his character varies with the mind, 
disposition, and sympathies of the individual or of 
the nation. The light is shining all around, and 
each soul has so far a capacity to receive it: but each 
receives only so much, and rejects the rest; hence 
the meagre, the ridiculous, the caricatured shapes 
and colors in which God is made to appear. Per- 
sons low in the scale of intelligence make him a 
mere Fetich, probably identifying him with certain 
objects or powers which we know to lie within the 
domain of nature. Communities, with a low moral 
standard, will love to have a God who patronizes 
thieving or robbery or murder. We see the same 
disposition working even in civilized countries. 
The lover of fine sentiment clothes him in robes of 
beauty, but takes no cognizance of his justice; and 
the academic moralist, declining to recognize the 
existence of sin in our world, paints him as a being 
of pure benevolence; while the conscience-stricken 
array him in colors of blood. The course of 
religious history in our world, under the influence 
of these two opposite forces, is thus a devious and 
inconsistent one, —an inclination to believe in God 
and an inclination to misrepresent him; a tendency 


140 NATURAL THEOLOGY?. 


to turn towards him, and a tendency to turn away 
from him; a disposition to receive him, but a dispo- 
sition to receive only so much as may suit or gratify. 


In these Lectures I have traversed two worlds, 
that of mind and that of matter,—Jin too rapid a 
manner I acknowledge. My object is gained, if I 
have in any measure succeeded in showing that 
every part of creation in the past and in the present, 
without us and within us, speaks in its own way, 
in loud or in low accents, in behalf of its great 
Creator. The argument is cumulative, derived partly 
from without, and partly from within, — partly from 
the external world, and partly from the princi- 
ples of the mind. The evidence is not so much 
a melody as a harmony produced by the union of 
many melodies. ‘The voice is like the voice of 
many waters; some soft as the sighing of the gentle 
stream, others loud as the roar of ocean sent forth 
by ten thousand waves. It is like the song which 
ascends in heaven from a people gathered out of 
every tongue and nation, each chanting in his own 
strain, but all uniting in one melodious and harmo- 
nious song. In particular we are constrained to 
believe that the true, the lovely, and the holy, all 
meet as in a focus of surpassing brilliancy in the 
character of God. Wherever these are to be found 
in his creatures, they are emanations from him. 
Thus our discussions, beginning with the creature, 
have ended with the Creator; beginning with the 
finite have ended with the Infinite; beginning with 


REVIEW OF H. SPENCER. I4I 


the imperfect have ended with the Perfect, — and 
lead us to Him in whom all excellence meets and 
centres. 


Having thus built up the structure, it will be neces- 
sary to meet those who assail it. You see that I set 
myself entirely against that prevailing style of talk 
in our day which represents God as unknown and 
unknowable. It was introduced, unfortunately, by 
Sir William Hamilton, who would make the Apostle 
Paul favor it because he starts in his argument from 
an altar which he had seen dedicated to the un- 
known God. But Paul said expressly to the men 
of Athens, to whom he was speaking, “Whom 
therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I 
(xareyyého) unto you.” And in writing to the Ro- 
mans, he says, “The invisible things of God from 
the creation of the world are clearly seen” —not seen 
by the eye, but by the mind; “being understood” 
(voovpera, comprehended by the higher mind) “from 
the things that are made.” Herbert Spencer has 
turned Hamilton’s rash expression to a purpose 
never intended. Mr. Spencer observes, very justly 
and sensibly, that “it is rigorously impossible to con- 
ceive that our knowledge is a knowledge of appear- 
ances only, without at the same time conceiving a 
reality of which they are appearances; for appear- 
ance without reality is unthinkable.” * This is a 


* «First Principles,” 2d ed., p. 88. In the Appendix to this 
volume will be found A Critical Note on Mr. Herbert Spencer’s 


Speculations. 


I42 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 


very important admission, of which I mean to take 
advantage. But then he maintains that this reality 
' beyond the appearances must ever remain unknown 
to man. It is at this point I meet him. He reckons 
it the province of science to master the known 
appearances; and he allots to religion, the sphere 
of unknown realities, that unascertained something 
which phenomena and their relations imply. This 
is the “fundamental verity” common to all relig- 
ions, the ultimate religious truth of the highest 
possible certainty, “that the power which the 
universe manifests to us is utterly unscrutable.” * 
I do not know what religious profit Mr. Spencer 
may derive from meditating on this Unknown, 
whether he feels that he should pay 1r (we cannot 
say Him) any worship, or render it any service, or 
feel under any obligation of duty to it; or whether 
it tends to draw him to what is good or drive him 
from what is evil. But of this I am sure, that if peo- 
ple generally should be led to embrace his creed, 
it would come to mean that men need not trouble 
themselves about religion, in the darkness of which 
no object can be seen to revere or to love. I am 
sure that if we banish religion to this Siberia, it 
will be to make it perish in the cold. To consign 
it thus is to bury it in the grave from which it will 
not send forth even a ghost to trouble any one. 

I meet Mr. Spencer on his own ground. I pro- 
ceed on his own admission. He comes down toa 
“fundamental verity.” He does so on the ground 


* First Principles, p. 46. 


CRITICISM OF H. SPENCER. 143 


of his being necessitated to assume it. He is con- 
strained to believe that there is something beyond 
the visible appearances, and that this is a reality ; 
for he says that “appearance without reality is 
unthinkable.” Now I, too, rest on a “fundamental 
verity.” I, too, believe that there 1s a something 
beyond what falls under the senses; and that this 
something is real. But on the same ground on 
which Mr. Spencer proceeds, in arguing a reality 
beyond our sensible experience, I proceed in main- 
taining that we know that reality, so far know it. 
If the one is a fundamental verity, so also is the 
other. If we are necessitated to believe the one, 
we are equally necessitated to believe the other. 
Or, rather, the “fundamental verity ” is, that we are 
constrained to believe, not in an unknown reality, 
but in a known reality. The truth is, we know this 
something to exist, because we so far know it. 

I have my doubts whether this “fundamental 
verity,” as Mr. Spencer puts it, can stand a sifting 
examination. It embraces three clauses: (1) that 
there is a something beyond, (2) that it is a reality, 
and (3) that it is unknown and unknowable. He 
is powerful in dogmatic assertion, and there are 
dependent minds that will at once bend under his 
authority ; but there are persons as, independent as 
he, who will ask themselves, and ask him, whether 
he is entitled, on his principles, to assume that, 
beyond what appears, there is a something which 
is areality. Might not the belief have sprung up 
without a cause? Or, if Mr. Spencer admit the 


144 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 


principle that every effect has a cause, he must 
seek for other causes, which, as they are brought 
in, may destroy the whole symmetry of his system, 
and turn this unknown into a known cause. Or, 
might not this belief have been produced by heredi- 
tary descent from some instinct of our ancestors 
among the lower animals? And what proof is 
there, or can there be, that this unknown something 
is a reality, —is any thing more than a belief ? Of 
this I am sure, that Mr. Spencer’s followers will 
care nothing for this something beyond, for this un- 
known something. They will say that, if we know | 
and can know nothing of its nature, it is a matter of 
no moment whether it exists or not; that the admis 
sion can carry with it no practical consequences for 
instruction, for comfort, or for admonition. If this 
be so, then this region which Mr. Spencer has so 
kindly allotted to religion, and in which all relig- 
ions may meet — in the dark — vanishes; and man- 
kind will not miss it, there being extremely little 
difference to us between absolute nothing, and 
the absolutely unknowable. But Mr. Spencer is 
completely mistaken, consciousness being wit- 
ness, as to the nature and character of this fun- 
damental verity, which, when properly interpreted, 
is, that we know things appearing; and on princi- 
ples which can be specified and defended, as, for 
instance, on the principle of causation, we argue 
that these things appearing, being real, imply 
other things also real, though not appearing to 
the senses. 


WE CAN COME TO KNOW GOD. 145 


The school against which I am arguing do not 
profess to deny the existence of God: this, they 
say, would be unphilosophical; it would be as 
unphilosophical to deny as to aflirm any thing as 
to a terra incognita. What they hold is,.that if he 
exist, he must be unknown. But, towards an abso- 
lutely unknown being we can cherish no affection; 
and we do not feel as if he could have any claim 
upon us for service or obedience. To look on this 
object is merely to gaze upon the darkness without 
a point of light to cheer. us. It can supply no high 
ideal after which to mould our character. From 
such a God, if he deserve the name, we can draw 
no sympathy in our sorrows, no help in our weak- 
ness. From him we can derive no hopes to cheer, 
though I can conceive that he might raise some 
fears of evil, to come we know not when or how. 

Now, I meet all this by showing that we are 
capable of knowing, and that what we know is a 
reality. From what we know directly, we can rise 
to the knowledge of other things. We cannot look 
immediately into the souls of our neighbors; but 
we infer that they exist, and can learn much of 
their character from what we see them do. We 
may not have been in India or China ourselves; but 
we know much about these countries, from the 
reports brought us by travellers. I allow that we 
are not directly conscious of God, any more than 
we are of our fellow-men; but we legitimately infer 
his character from the works of creation and provi- 
dence, and the revelation he has made of himself 


and 


4 


146 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 


in his Word. We cannot know the world to come 
by visiting it; but we know what it must be from 
the character of God, and the moral laws by which 
he governs the universe. 

A thing, I hold, can be known by its effects. 
Most of the things we know are known to us 
simply by what they do. We know the sun and 
stars; we know that distant house and hill; not 
directly, but as reflecting rays of light which reach 
our eyes. There is a man We have never seen: 
but we know him to be eloquent from his speeches 
which we have read; to be benevolent, from his 
deeds of charity ; to be truthful, from his continuing 
in the path of integrity when he might have been 
tempted to swerve from it. In like manner, we 
_ can come to know God from his works: know him 
to be powerful, from the traces of power every- 
where visible; to be good, from the provision made 
for the happiness of his creatures; and to be just, 
from his mode of government. The real effects in 
nature carry us up to a real cause above nature. 
We recognize him, not as the unknown cause, but 
as the known cause of known effects. We clothe 
him with varied attributes, so as to make him capa- 
ble of preducing the varied effects we discover. 
The evidences of design argue an adequate cause 
in an intelligent designer; the traces of beneficent 
contrivance show that he is animated by love; and 
the nature of the moral power in man, and of the 
moral government of the world, is a proof of the 
existence of a Moral Governor. 


WE KNOW GOD BY AIS WORKS. 147 


' 

We know all created things better, from the very 
circumstance that we know God as their author. 
Aristotle uttered a profound truth when he said we 
know things in their causes.* The truth is, we can. 
scarcely be said to have a full knowledge of a thing 
till we know its causes. I hold that we have a very 
imperfect knowledge of the works of nature till we 
view them as works of God, —not only as works 
of mechanism, but works of intelligence; not-only 
as under laws, but under a law-giver, wise and 
good. 

True, we do not know all about God. We know, 
after all, only a part; but, “we know in part,” 
and what we know is truth, so far as it goes. 
“ Clouds and darkness are round about him; right- 
eousness and judgment are the habitation of his 
throne.” The truth is, there is no object with which 
we have such ample means of becoming acquainted. 
We cannot open our eyes without discovering his 
workmanship. We cannot inspect any part of 
nature without contemplating in the very act his 
ways of procedure. We are ever, whether we 
acknowledge it or not, recipients of his bounty. 
There is no being, excepting ourselves, with whom 
we come into more immediate and frequent contact. 
We know only in part, because of his infinity and 
our finity; but to know a very little of him is to 
know much. As Paul told the men of Athens, 
“He giveth to all life and breath, and all things,” 

* Tore ydp eidévat papév Exaotov, Stav THY mpaTyv aitiav olausba yvwpi- 
Cer. — Metaphysics, B. i. ¢. iii. 


148 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 


and he is “not far from every one of us: for in him 
we live, and move, and have our being, as certain 
also of your own poets have said, For we are zlso his 
offspring.” We know enough to gain our faith; to 
inspire our confidence; to kindle our love; to awe 
us in the time of prosperity when we might be 
tempted to become vain, proud, and presumptuous ; 
and to sustain us in all the critical positions of life 
and the dark dispensations of providence. 

It requires to be added that as most errors con- 
tain some truth, as all prevalent errors contain a 
sufficient amount of truth to make them plausible, so 
we may discover some truth even in the meagre 
fundamental principle of Spencer. I must ever 
hold that we can come to know God: still he is to 
a great extent unknown. “Canst thou by search- 
ing find out God? canst thou find out the Almighty 
unto perfection? It is as high as heaven; what canst 
thou do? deeper than hell; what canst thou know?” 
We can so far apprehend him; but, to use an old 
distinction, we cannot comprehend him. We know 
him as we know the ocean when we stand upon its 
shores: what we see is the ocean, but not the whole 
ocean, which stretches beyond our ken. This arises 
mainly from our limited capacity; but partly, also, 
it may be, because of our pollution, as not capable 
of reflecting the full brightness of God. It is clear 
that God has attributes like ours; for, by the powers 
with which he has endowed us, we can produce 
effects like those we see produced by him in 
nature. We have been formed in his likeness, and 


GOD SO FAR UNKNOWN. 149 


can thus understand those qualities in Him which 
are like those he hath been pleased to commu- 
nicate to us. But, even as to these, the attributes 
which are limited in us are infinite in him, and can- 
not be grasped by us who are finite. But there is 
more than this involved in our ignorance. There 
is another and deeper sense in which God is un- 
known. We discover effects in nature which we 
must refer to a sovereign power that must ever 
remain a mystery to us in this world. God seems 
to possess perfections differing not only in degree 
but in kind from any thing possessed by man. The 
blind man cannot form the most distant idea of 
colors, nor the deaf man of music; so there may 
be attributes of God of which we cannot form the 
dimmest conception, differing as much from any 
thing we have experienced, as colors do from 
sounds, as mind does from body. It is in this high 
region that we place the mysteries of the decrees 
of God, of the origin of evil, and such doctrines as 
that of the Trinity. Is not.this the very view that 
is given in Scripture where he is described as known 
and yetunknown? “The invisible things are clearly 
seen, being understood from the things that are 
made.” “Yet verily thou art a God that hidest thy- 
self.” All this is suited to our nature, to its strength 
and to its weakness. If God were all darkness, we 
could look upon him only with an ignorant terror: 
if he were all light, he might dazzle us by excess of 
brightness. As it is, we are led at once to revere 
and to love him. We instinctively avoid the open, 


I50 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 


uninteresting plain, with the long, straight road 
leading through it, from which we see at once all 
we ever can see; and we prefer the country with 
hill and dale, with open lawn and forest, with light 
and shade, where we ever get glimpses of new 
objects and see them in distant perspective. It is 
from a like principle that we delight to lose our- 
selves in the contemplation of the mysteries of the 
divine nature, in which there is the brightest light, 
and yet enough of darkness to awe us into rever- 
ence, and subdue us into a sense of dependence. 
God may truly be described as the Being of whom 
we know the most, inasmuch as we cannot open 
our eyes without looking on the operations of his 
hands, and we see more of his works and ways 
than of the works and ways of any other; and yet 
He is the Being of whom we know the least, as 
we know comparatively less of his whole nature than 
we do of ourselves, or of our fellow-men, or of any 
object falling under our notice in this world. They 
who know most of him in earth or heaven know 
that they know little after all; but they know that 
they may know more and more of him throughout 
eternal ages. 


Vie 


PROGRESS OF FREE THOUGHT IN AMERICA. — RATIONALISM. 
— BOSTON THEOLOGY. — POSITIVISM. 


KEEP it before me throughout these Lectures, 
that I am addressing young men who have been © 
thrown into the current of the times; who must 
swim with it, or resist it, or, better still, seek to 
guide it. I presume that you look, from time to 
time, into the literary organs of the day, and that 
you have heard of, and may have to take your part 
— by act, vote, or speech —in, the questions dis- 
cussed. You wish to be able to form a sound judg- 
ment, each for himself, and then take your position, 
and act your part intelligently, charitably, wisely, 
_courageously, in the eventful and critical era in 
which your lot has been cast. 

In the Lectures already delivered, I have laid 
down what I believe to be the right positions, and 
_ defended them to the best of my ability, and as 
fully as my limited space allowed. I feel that I 
must now apply them, in the good old way of Puri- 
tan preaching, to the circumstances in which the 
students in this Seminary are placed. I cannot 
forget what are your surroundings, as you are pur- 


Tse NATURAL THEOLOGY. 


suing your education in this country in an age in 
which old thought is being thoroughly sifted. I have 
now to survey the history and the state of opinion 
in America: this I would do in no harsh or narrow 
manner, but in order to estimate with candor the 
influences under which you may have to form your 
opinions and decide on your line of conduct. 

In doing so, it will be necessary to take a look 
at the nature and progress of the new opinions 
which have been opposing or seeking to undermine 
the old. But, in order to this, you must take an 
excursion with me into New England, and pay a 
visit to Boston, which has exercised such an influ- 
ence on the literature and theology of America, — 
on literature altogether for good; and on theology, 
whether for good or for evil, we must now seek 
to determine. We must, in particular, follow the 
progress of what has been called the Boston Theol- 
ogy; for there is a Boston Theology, just as there 
has been a Genevan Theology, a Wesleyan Theol- 
ogy, and an Oxford Theology. 

I feel as if I were familiar with the Boston Theol- 
ogy. It is known not only here, but has a name 
in Europe. ‘There were anticipations of it in Old 
England, and all over New England; but it was 
Dr. Channing who first brought it under the notice 
of the world. Of the illustrious man now named, 
no one should allow himself to speak except with 
profound reverence. His style — with a little too 
much of glitter and of rhetoric at times — is worthy 
of being compared with that of Macaulay. His essay 


CHANNING. 153 


on the character of Napoleon has a higher tone 
than any thing Macaulay ever wrote, and is one of 
the noblest specimens of moral criticism which we 
have in the English language. His firm and con- 
sistent opposition to slavery is a continued rebuke of 
the conduct of many chicken-hearted or time-serv- 
ing Evangelicals, who are loud enough now in their 
denunciations, but could keep wonderfully quiet an 
age ago, and ever said hush, when the troublesome 
subject was started. To his credit, so I reckon it, 
he stuck by the inspiration of Scripture, as I under- 
stand it, and has left us defences of the Word of 
God as true as they are eloquent. But everybody 
sees that he has failed to prove that Socinianism or 
Unitarianism is in the Bible, in the letter or in the 
spirit of it. Whatever may be found in the Word 
of God, it is clear that rationalism is not there. 
Paul is certainly no rationalist, when he proclaims 
that Jesus held it no robbery to be equal with God; 
that a man is justified by faith; and that Jesus 
died for sinners, — the just for the unjust. John is 
certainly no rationalist when he declares that the 
Logos, which was with God and was God, became 
flesh, and shows us a way by which we may rise 
through him to fellowship with God; and, “truly. 
our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son 
Jesus Christ.” And, surely, Jesus is no rationalist, 
when he, the meekest and the most truly humble of 
all men that have appeared on earth, could say so 
calmly, “I and my Father are one,” and when the 
Jews were proclaiming, “ No one can forgive sin but 
fie 


154 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 


God only,” could command, “Thy sins be forgiven 
thee.” The Old Testament shadow going before 
the substance, and telling of its approach dimly and 
yet clearly, is certainly not rationalism. So opin- 
ion could not stay at the place to which Channing 
conducted it. Those who in these times keep his 
position are made to feel that they are left high and 
dry upon a sandy beach, to which he- had floated 
them, but from which they are not likely to be deliv- 
ered by any subsequent wave rising to their relief. 
So a bolder and more out-spoken thinker ap- 
peared: a man somewhat too self-dependent and 
self-conscious, but courageous and ever ready to 
defend the weak against the strong, and to run to the 
rescue of suffering humanity. He does not affect to 
derive what doctrine he held from the Bible; and all 
men felt that he was right there. His creed is not 
to be found in the Old Testament with its sacrificial 
types; or in the New Testament with a bloody cross 
on its title-page ; in the unworldly discourses of Jesus 
recommending meekness, self-denial, the casting 
away of our own righteousness, and trust in God; 
or the elaborate exposition of an atonement in the 
epistles of Paul. His mother, living in the declining 
age of Puritanism, — when its life had withered and 
only its bare stalks were left, like stubble after the 
grain had been cut down, — recommended: “In my 
earliest boyhood I was taught to respect the instinc- 
tive promptings of conscience, regarding it as the 
voice of God in the soul of man, which must always 
be obeyed; to speak the truth without evasion or 


THEODORE PARKER. 155 


~ 


concealment; to love justice and conform to it; 
to reverence merit in all men, and that regardless 
of their rank or reputation; and, above all things, I 
was taught to love and trust the dear God.” All 
good, we say, only this conscience needs to be 
quickened, enlightened by the revealed word of 
God, and strengthened in its contest with sin in the 
heait by the God who planted it there. This ardent 
man was not satisfied with the creed of his party, so 
like a winter day, cold, colorless, so soon setting 
in freezing night. “Their cry was ever ‘duty, duty, 
work, work ;’ but they failed to address with equal 
power the soul, and did not also shout ‘joy, joy! 
delight, delight!’” “Their water was all laboriously 
pumped up from deep wells. It did not gush out 
leaping from the great spring. That is indeed on 
the surface of the sloping ground, feeding the little 
streams that run among the hills, and both quench- 
ing the wild asses’ thirst, and watering also the 
meadows, newly mown, but which yet comes from 
the Rock of Ages, and is pressed out by the cloud- 
compelling mountains that rest thereon: yes, by the 
gravitation of the earth itself; yes, by the gravi- 
tation of the earth itself.” “I thought they lacked 
the deep internal feeling of piety which alone could 
make feeling lasting. Certainly they had not that 
most joyous of all delights. This fact seemed clear in 
their sermons, their prayers, and even in the hymns 
they made, borrowed, or adopted.” “It is a dismal 
fault in a religious party this lack of piety, and 
dismally have the Unitarians answered it!” “Their 


1506 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 


creed was only a denial always trembling before the 
Orthodox.” This did not suit the strong, impulsive 
nature of the man; and so he must construct a re- 
ligion for himself. It was what he called an Abso- 
lute Religion, which belongs to man’s nature. He 
rejected the sensationalism, so earthly, of the old 
Unitarian school, and betook himself to intuitions, 
which seem to carry him up to the heavens, and 
actually took him up to the clouds. He drew his 
system (1) from the instinctive intuition of the 
Divine, the consciousness that there is a God; (2) 
The instinctive intuition of the -just and right, 
a consciousness that there is a moral law, inde- 
pendent of our will, which we ought to keep; 
(3) The instinctive intuition of the immortal, a 
consciousness that the essential element of man, 
the principle of individuality, never dies. He got 
the inspiration which led to all this from the works 
of Carlyle and Coleridge, reprinted in America, 
and reviews and translations of Cousin, and longed 
earnestly to get aid from the destructive Biblical 
criticism and the constructive @ przor¢ philosophy 
of Germany, which aid he never got; for the 
Germans thought his religion very irreligious, and 
his rationalism very irrational. But when they 
heard these utterances, the young men of Boston — 
that is, men who were young thirty or forty years 
ago — shouted, and flung up their hats in the air, 
and said, Channing is setting as the sun on a win- 
ter day, but Theodore Parker is rising like the sun 
on a spring morning. 


INTUITIONALISM. 157 


The icy, the frigid, and rigid rationalism of the 
winter now came to be dissolved in the heat of a 
warmer season, and your fathers had a time of wad- 
ing deep in melting matter. Itis now acknowledged 
that the logical processes of definition and reason- 
ing can do little in religion: and those who in the 
previous age would have appealed to these now called 
in something livelier, — Feeling, Belief, Inspiration; 
in one word, Intuition. In the age then passing 
away, “excelsior” youths were like to be starved 
in cold ; in the age which succeeded, they are in 
greater danger of having the seeds of wasting 
disease fostered by lukewarm damps and _ gilded 
vapors. ‘The appeal was to faith, feeling, intuition. 
But what were men to believe in? Did any two 
men agree in their feelings? Are we quite certain 
when we have intuition and when we have not intu- 
ition? The arbiter was too vague in its utterances 
to teach certainty, to secure assurance, or even to 
gain general consent. A dreamer appeared as the 
representative of this period, getting the material 
of his dreams from Goethe and Thomas Carlyle, 
but ever colored with the hues of his own peculiar 
genius. He is thus introduced by Theodore Parker. 
“The brilliant genius of Emerson rose in the winter 
night and hung over Boston, drawing the eyes of 
ingenuous young people to look to that great new 
star, and a beauty and a mystery which charmed 
for the moment, while it gave also perennial instruc- 
tion, as it led them forward along new paths and 
towards new hopes. America has seen no such 


158 NATURAL LALOLOG Tae 


sight before.” “A beauty and a mystery,” I admit, 
“which charms for the moment.” If I were inclined 
to believe in dreams of any kind, I would as readily 
believe in Emerson’s as in any others. ‘The visions 
seen by De Quincey, the opium-eater, are not more 
beautiful. Coming from such a soul they must con- 
tain truth, some of it welling up from the deepest 
intuitions of the mind as from a fresh, clear foun- 
tain. Some are the unconscious reflection of the 
light shining from the Word of God in a Christian 
land. Others are to be read, like dreams, by con- 
traries. The oracles which he utters are often capa- 
ble of a double meaning; and men will interpret 
them to suit their purpose. And what, after all, am 
I to think and believe about God and the soul and 
the world to come, and of the way of rising to com- 
munion with God and the enjoyments of heaven? 
is the question which is often put to me by young 
men, after reading Emerson’s papers; and I have to 
tell them that Mr. Emerson must answer them, for 
I cannot. 

About thirty years ago, when men now fifty years 
of age were boys at college, they believed that 
something great and good and stable was to come 
out of a showy Intuitionalism, as I call it, which 
drew all truth out of the depths of the soul. Men 
like Goethe and Coleridge and Carlyle, and their 
admirers in Great Britain and America, looked so 
profound and threw out such mysterious utterances 
of their being able —- if only they chose — to divulge 
something very profound, that earnest and confiding 


GOETHE AND CARLYLE. 159 


youths believed in them. But somehow or other 
they never chose: some of us think, because they 
had nothing to utter. Though often pressed to 
expound their secret, they have always shunned 
doing so; and people begin to suspect that there 
is nothing in it. There was an expectation, long 
entertained by many, that something better than the 
old Christianity of the Bible, literally inte: preted, 
might come out of the great German philosophic 
systems of Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, and 
Schleiermacher ; but these hopes have been doomed 
to acknowledged disappointment. Coleridge has 
played out his tune, sweet and irregular as the harp 
of AHolus; and all men perceive that he never had 
any thing to meet the deeper wants of humanity, 
except what he drew from the songs of Zion. It 
has long been clear in regard to Goethe, and is now 
being seen in regard to Carlyle, that neither of 
them ever had any thing positive to furnish in 
religion, and that all they had to utter was blankly 
negative; and I rather think that the last hope of 
deriving any thing soul-satisfying from such quar- 
ters has vanished from the minds of those who 
have been impressed with their genius. 

The spirit is still lingering in certain circles of 
America, and it clothes itself at times in such beau- 
tiful forms that I am inclined to admire it, as I do 
the clouds in the evening sky, convinced though I 
be, all the while, that they are mere vapors, and 
soon to fade into dulness and gloom. As to the 
intuitionalism, which rose out of rationalism as 


160 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 


fogs rise out of the melted ice, it is acknowledged 
that it is not rational. No man can draw Parker’s 
creed —a creed noble in so many respects — out of 
human reason, any more than he could derive Chan- 
ning’s creed out of the Scriptures. One-half of 
all that is noble was drawn through a noble mother 
out of the Bible, is in fact the reflection of the light 
which is diffused all throughout the atmosphere in 
a Christian country while the sun is shining, but 
without persons being conscious of the source from 
which it comes. The other half has come from a 
heart with noble instincts, but cannot stand the sift- 
ing examination of the reason. There is na arbiter 
provided to decide what we should accept, and what - 
we should reject. In constructing a rational theol- 
ogy, these men, to use an expression of Lessing’s, 
have constructed an irrational philosophy. ‘The 
stratum which promised to be so auriferous is becom- 
ing thin, and is ready to crop out to the surface, 
and terminate its existence, or at least the hopes 
which men entertained regarding it. 

To what is the appeal to lie? The old and cold 
reason of the antiquated Unitarians? None so ready 
as the men of the new school to denounce the heart- 
less natural theology of the old rational school. 
Every one sees how flickering a light the reason, 
in the sense of the logical understanding and the 
reasoning process, can throw on the grand problems 
of religion, which the heart insists upon having 
solved. “Sufficient,” as Bacon says, “to convince 
of atheism, but not to inform religion.” 


JS DHE APPEAL TO SCIENCE? ~*~ «16% 


To what then is the appeal to be? To science, 
say some. To what science? To physical science? 
Physical science has its own grand domain, wide 
as the telescope or spectroscope can penetrate; but 
among all its atoms, earths, and stars, it discovers 
nothing to throw light on the great questions started 
as to the relation in which man stands to God, and 
the existence of the soul after death. All our wiser 
expounders of science confess this. And the scien- 
tific school, which is specially guiding these men, 
is ever taking pains to show that science should 
avoid such questions, as having no light to shed 
upon them. A Lecturer in Boston allows that, at 
present, science cannot answer the question as to 
the immortality of the soul, but “from the future, 
not the past, must the light come;” and he seems to 
indicate that it must be “untold years ” before it can 
come to this. Verily, it is poor consolation to the 
mother, mourning over her boy removed by death, 
to assure her that, some millions of years hence, 
science will settle the question as to whether she 
may ever expect to meet her son in another world; 
and science will have to add that all things are 
approaching nearer to that cold in which all 
life is to perish, to be followed by a conflict and 
conflagration in which all things are to be ab- 
sorbed. 

But the same lecturer hints, and another lecturer 
states plainly, that what physical science cannot 
establish, what the alleged resurrection of Jesus 
cannot prove, may be founded on certain moral 


T62 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 


ideas, on a sense of virtue and moral obligation, 
by the faculties which distinguish between right and 
wrong. But, meanwhile, they are aware that the 
school which can generate life, and plants, and 
animals, and man, out of star dust, can develop 
these ideas, by natural law, out of sensations and 
impressions. I believe that we are entitled to appeal 
to these ideas in constructing a reasonable religious 
conviction. Iam sure that the arguments employed 
by Mr. Mill and Mr. Bain to undermine these ideas ° 
can be answered, just as the arguments against 
final cause can be answered. Along with the traces 
of design in the universe, and other first or funda- 
mental truths, such as that of cause and effect, these 
ideas do conduct us to a belief in God. I am truly 
glad to find the most advanced of the Boston school 
still cleaving to these grand moral principles. 
Finding in these ideas ground on which they feel 
that they can stand and stay, they may be allured 
to look back and retrace their steps. Ido hope 
this of some of them who are evidently dissatisfied 
with their position, and afraid of the termination of 
the path on which they have entered. But when 
these moral ideas are adopted, they must be consist 
ently followed out. And when they are carried out 
logically, when the intimations of conscience and 
the sense of sin are carefully looked at and weighed, 
they give a very different view of God from that 
which is taken in the new theology, and tend to 
bring them back, and settle them upon the old 
foundations. 


- THE APPEAL TO FAITH. 163 


But in the mean time the appeal of these men is to 
the faith, to the feelings. But if there be no truth 
set before the faith, it may become the weakest 
credulity ; and as to the feelings, they may change 
quicker than the phases,of the, fickle moon which 
lovers worship, quicker than the winds which are 
an emblem of human wishes and passions. If I 
dream one way and you dream another, which of 
them is a third party to follow? Some are inclined 
to believe their own dreams, but few are disposed 
to believe the dreams of their neighbors. And so, 
in the end, every one will be found to take the way 
which his impulse or his fancy or his self-interest 
may lead him. 

And, as the result of the whole, the party is, at 
present, in a state of unrest, discontented with their 
position, and quarrelling with one another. An age 
ago the old rationalistic party were very self-sufhi- 
cient, feeling that if they had not the Bible, they 
had natural religion to fall back upon. Now they 
are made to realize that they cannot be so sure of 
their foundation. Men of a devout spirit in the 
party of progress, corresponding to the avdges ceGouevor 
mentioned so often in the Book of Acts, are becom- 
ing alarmed. The piety which Theodore Parker 
did not find in the old Unitarian body has not 
appeared in the new body. There are fathers shud- 
dering at the thought of bringing up their sons to 
such a creed, or, rather, negation of creed: they 
have fears that its gossamer threads will not restrain 
the youth when flesh and blood are strong and 


164. NATURAL THEOLOGY. 


temptations are in the way. Mothers are not sure 
that the faith expounded will stay and support their 
daughters, and keep them from rushing into and 
running round the giddy whirls of pleasure, in which 
they are certain to become dizzy and fall. For many 
such I have strong hopes that they will be prepared 
to move back to the old foundations. And whether 
they come up to the full faith which I cherish or no, 
my whole soul will be with them in their struggle, 
and my prayer is that they may gain the victory. 
But meanwhile the party of Free Thought is 
moving on. ‘They are sliding down a steep slope, 
catching at times at lumps of yielding earth.or brittle 
branches, only to find, as they give way, that their 
fall is hastened. It writes beautiful papers with 
noble thoughts and elevated sentiments, which | 
much admire, in the pages of some of our maga- 
zines, but with no settled doctrine or logical consist- 
ency. It has a literature, and it has lectures, and 
men go to hear them who have no faith, and who 
do not wish to have any, and who would relieve the 
dulness of a Sabbath in a city in which Puritanism 
has still its influence by listening to fine sentiment 
and ingenious speculation, which are more pleasing 
to them than preaching about these weary subjects, 
sin and salvation. But with all its literary ability, 
it has not been able to secure a church organization © 
or church fellowship: it has not even a rope of 
sand; it has only a ribbon of cloud to bind its mem- 
bers. It has discourses, but no united prayers. It 
has certainly no God who can or will hear prayer. 


PRESENT FEELING OF THE PARTY. 165 


I am speaking what I know; for there are men 
and women, young men and maidens, who have so 
far opened their hearts tome. And God forbid that 
I should look on them with a sulky enmity or a 
supercilious pride, as if I had a title to say to them, 
“Stand by, for I am holier than thou.” Some of 
them are feeling as if the foundations are giving 
way ; they are too proud to go back, too timid to go 
forward, and yet are conscious that they have no 
ground to standon. Most of them know not what 
to give up and what to hold, or what they have left. 
To my knowledge, there are young hearts wrung 
with anguish, till feelings, more bitter than tears, 
have been pressed from them without bringing any 
relief. With some their voice is a cry like that of 
the child coming into the world; like that of Goethe, 
when he left the world, demanding “more light.” 
With some it is a wail of disappointment, like that 
which came from the Hebrews when they looked 
into the Ark of the Covenant and saw it empty, the 
tables of the law, the pot of manna, and the bud- 
ding rod all gone. With some it is a bitterness 
against what has deceived the world and deceived 
themselves; and it would vent itself in a curse, if 
they knew of a God or a devil. against whom to 
direct it. With some itis a feeling of wanton levity, 
as if they rejoiced at being delivered from all their 
fears, and were able to say, “I have got rid of thee, 
O mine enemy !” 

Fortunately or unfortunately, it is the last of its 
race: and, like certain doomed Indian tribes, it feels 


- 


166 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 


a 


itself to be so. Itais “the last rose of summer left 
blooming alone;” but it must go, for the winter is 
coming. Its doom is to be eaten up by a spectral. 
figure which you may see approaching with firm 
and steady step, but with lean and haggard form, 
spreading like death a shivering feeling wherever 
it goes. Iam sorry to be obliged to show to these 
fair forms which move so gaily what is the doom 
awaiting after they have danced a little time longer. 


An immense solitary spectre waits: 

It has no shape, it has no sound; it has 

No place, it has no time; it is, and was, 

And will be; it is never more nor less, 

Nor glad nor sad. Its name is Nothingness. 
Power walketh high; and misery doth crawl; 
And the clepsydron drips; and the sands fall 
Down in the hour-glass; and the shadows sweep 
Around the dial; and men wake and sleep, 
Live, strive, regret, forget, and love, and hate, 
And know it. This spectre saith, I wait, 
And at the last it beckons and they pass; 

And still the red sands fall within the glass, 
And still the shades around the dial sweep; 
And still the water-clock doth drip and weep. 
And this is all. 


This is oszetcvesm. I suppose Diodorus, sur- 
named Chronos, the Slow, must have written about 
it in ancient times; for it is recorded of him that he 
wrote a treatise on the Awful Nothing and died in 
despair. As his work has not come down to us, 
I will be obliged to describe it, even though I 
should expose myself to the sarcasm of the Scythian 
traveller, Vae Quantum Nehili. 


PRESENT ERROR. 167 


POSITIVISM. 


I take as representatives of it, M. Comte, Mr. 
Mill, and Mr. Herbert Spencer. They have auxil- 
iaries in Mr. Grote, Mr. Lewes, Mr. Buckle, Pro- 
fessor Bain, Professor Huxley, and others powerful 
in particular departments; but these three may be 
held as the ablest defenders of their peculiar prin- 
ciples. All agree in this, that man can know noth- 
ing of the nature of things; that he can know 
merely phenomena, or relations of things unknown ; 
-and that all he can do with these is to generalize 
them into laws. All agree farther, that it is impos- 
sible for us to rise to the knowledge of first or final 
causes, and they exert their whole energy in de- 
nouncing the attempt to find what they call occult 
causes. So far they agree. On other and not 
unimportant points they differ. Comte says that all 
our knowledge comes through the senses, and that 
the study of the mind must be a study of the brain. 
Mill says we have other ideas, or rather he would 
call them feelings, besides those got through the 
senses; and both he and Herbert Spencer argue 
that we can study the mind through self-conscious- 
ness. Mill generates all our ideas from sensation, 
and feelings springing up in an unknown way by 
means of association of ideas, which is capable of 
turning them into the varied shapes which they 
take. Spencer gets them by development through 
long ages, first in the brutes and then in the human 


168 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 


races. Comte, who was largely an impetuous intel- 
lectual steam-engine, — he would have said brain- 
engine, —takes little or no notice of our ideas of 
beauty and morality. Mill derives them from asso- 
ciation, giving to association ‘an indefinitely large 
power. Spencer ascribes them to development, but 
not unfolding what are the powers involved in the 
development. Comte is an open and rabid atheist. 
Mr. Mill evidently feels that he has no argument 
left, on his system, to prove the existence of God, 
utters no profession of his faith, and believes that 
an atheist may be a man of high piety. Herbert 
Spencer argues that beyond known phenomena 
there is, and must be, a great unknown; and he 
allots this region to religion, where there may, or 
there may not be, an unknown God. Comte is the 
most original thinker; but is, throughout, narrow, 
one-sided, dogmatic, moving on in one line like the 
blindered horse, or the steam locomotive, seeing 
nothing on either side of him. Mill has the widest 
sympathies, and is the most appreciative of the 
views of others, though often he is narrow and ex- 
clusive, and is not able to follow out his views 
consistently. Spencer is the most vigorous specu- 
lator of them all; and, like the giants of old, he. 
would heap Pelion and Pindus, and presumptuously 
reach the greatest heights without passing through 
the intermediate steps. 

M. Comte provided a religion and a worship 
for his followers. He had no God, but he had a 
“Grand Etre,” in Collective Humanity, or “the con- 


COMTE'S SYSTEM OF RELIGION. 169 


tinuous resultant of all the forces capable of volun- 
tarily concurring in the universal perfectioning of 
the world,” being in fact a deification of his sys- 
tem of science and sociology. In the worship he 
enjoined, he has nine sacraments, and a priest- 
hood, and public honors to be paid to the Collective 
Humanity; with no public liberty of conscience or 
of education in sacred, or, indeed, in any subjects. 
The religious observances were to occupy two hours 
every day. Mr. Mill tells us, “Private adoration is 
to be addressed to Collective Humanity in the per- 
sons of worthy individual representatives, who may 
be either living or dead, but must in all cases be 
women; for women, being the sexe azmant, rep- 
resent the best attribute of humanity, that which 
ought to regulate all human life, nor can humanity 
possibly be symbolized in any form but that of a 
woman. ‘The objects of private adoration are the 
mother, the wife, and the daughter, representing 
severally the past, the present, and the future, and 
calling into active exercise the three social senti- 
ments, —veneration, attachment, and kindness. We 
are to regard them, whether dead or alive, as our 
guardian angels, ‘les vrais anges gardiens. If 
the last two have never existed; or if, in the particu- 
lar case, any of the three types is too faulty for the 
office assigned it, —their place may be supplied by 
some other type of womanly excellence, even by 
one merely historical.”* The Christian religion 
surely does not suffer by being placed alongside of 


* Comte and Positivism, p. 150. 
8 


I70 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 


this system, which is one of the two new religions 
which this century has produced, the other being 
Mormonism. The author clung more and more 
fondly to this faith and ceremonial as he advanced in 
years. His English followers are ashamed of it, and 
ascribe it to his lunacy; as if he had not been tinged 
with madness (as his poor wife knew) all his life, 
and as if his whole system were not the product of a 
powerful, but of a constitutionally diseased, intellect. 

He denounces his English followers because they 
did not adopt his moral and social system; he char- 
acterizes the conversion of those who have adopted 
his positivity and rejected his religion as an abor- 
tion; and declares that it must proceed from impo- 
tence of intellect, or insufficiency of heart, commonly 
from both!* There is a basis of wisdom in this 
complaint. All history shows that man is a relig- 
ious, quite as certainly as he is a feeling and a 
rational, being. But what has the British school 
provided to meet man’s religious wants? As yet 
they have furnished nothing. But Mr. Mill, who 
always weighs his words, and who is too skilful a 
dialectician to say more than he means, evidently 
points to something which is being hatched, and 
may some day burst forth. While he has the strong- 
est objection to the system of politics and morals set 
forth in the “ Politique Positive,” he thinks “it has 
superabundantly shown the possibility of giving to - 
the service of humanity, even without the belief in 
a Providence, both the psychological power and the 


* Politique Positive, Tome I. Pref. p. xy., Ill: p. 24: 


BINT STOR MR. MILL; 171 


social efficacy of a religion; making it take hold 
of human life, and color all thought, feeling, and 
action ina manner of which the greatest ascendancy 
ever exercised by any religion may be but a type 
and foretaste.”* More specifically in a late work 
Mr. Mill says, that “though conscious of being an 
a circumstance which 





extremely small minority,” 
is sure to catch those “individualists ” who are bent 
on appearing original, —“ we venture to think that a 
religion may exist without belief in a God, and that 
a religion without a God may be, even to Christians, 
an instructive and profitable object of contempla- 
tion.” t He tells us that, in order to constitute a 
religion, there must be “a creed or conviction,” “a 
belief or set of beliefs,” “a sentiment connected 
with this creed,” and a “cudltus.” I confess I should 
like excessively to see this new religion with its 
creed and its ca/tus fully developed. It would match 
the theologies, with their ceremonial observances, 
projected by doctrinacres in the heat of the first 
French Revolution. There is no risk of the Brit- 
ish school setting up a religion and a worship so 
superbly ridiculous as that of M. Comte; but I 
venture to predict that when it comes, it will be so 
scientifically cold, and so emotionally blank, as to 
be incapable of gathering any interest around it, of 
accomplishing any good, or, I may add, inflicting 
any evil. 

The world will soon be in a position fairly to 
estimate M. Comte, who has often been under- 


* Utilitarianism, p. 48. t+ Comte and Positivism, p. 133. 


7 


172 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 


estimated, and as often over-estimated. At first lit- 
tle appreciated by the mass, even of thinkers, he 
secured at an early stage the admiration of a select 
few, who .discerned the vigor of his intellect and 
saw the partial truth which his system contained, 
or who were subdued by his dogmatic spirit and 
power of assertion: these men spoke of him in 
exaggerated terms, and compared him to Bacon 
and to Leibnitz. His direct influence has all along 
been very small, being confined to those who had 
the courage to read through his ponderous volumes, 
in which most had to confess with Mr. Huxley: “I 
found the veins of ore few and far between, and the 
rock so apt to run to mud, that one incurred the 
risk of being intellectually smothered in the work- 
ing.” But his indirect influence, through eminent 
men who followed his method and caught his spirit, 
has been very great. However, the time of reac- 
tion against him and his exclusive pretensions seems 
to have come. Sir John Herschel showed, twenty 
years ago, that he was guilty of mathematical blun- 
ders which would have disgraced any student seek- 
ing for honors in Cambridge. And now his friends 
are turning out to be his bitterest foes. Mr. Mill 
cannot express in too strong language his abhor- 
rence of his system of social organization, which 
admits of no liberty of action, or even of thought and 
conscience. Mr. Spencer has criticised severely 
his much lauded generalization of the progress of 
knowledge, which is said to be first theological, then 
metaphysical, then positive, showing that it is full 


ESTIMATE OF COMTE. 173 


of error and confusion. And now Professor Huxley 
tells us: “That part of M. Comte’s writings which 
deals with the philosophy of physical science ap- 
peared to me to possess singularly little value, and 
to show that he had but the most superficial, and 
merely second-hand, knowledge of most branches 
of what is usually understood by science. 1 do not 
mean by this merely that Comte was behind our 
present knowledge, or that he was unacquainted 
with the details of the science of his own day. No 
one ‘could justly make such defects cause of com- 
plaint in a philosophical writer of the past genera- 
tion. What struck me was his want of apprehension 
of the great features of science, his strange mistakes 
as to the merits of his scientific contemporaries, and 
his ludicrously erroneous notions about the part 
which some of the scientific doctrines, current in his 
time, were destined to play in the future.”* Every 
man, after being buffeted about—it may be—in 
this world, will at last find his level. These men are 
placing M. Comte somewhat lower than I do. But 
it is a question for them to settle. These criticisms 
show that the day of M. Comte is fast declining. 

* “Tay Sermons,” p. 164. Mr. Huxley thinks that there is 
some value in ‘‘ the chapters on speculative and practical sociol- 
ogy.” But this is not just the department in which Mr. Huxley 
is an authority. I am reminded of a story told by Hugh Miller 
of a company of savans who were discussing the merits of the 
‘‘Vestiges of Creation,” then newly published. The naturalist 
was sure that it was full of bad natural history, but believed 
that the astronomy was good; while the natural philosopher 


had heard that the geology was good, but knew that the astron+ 
omy was incorrect, &c. 


174 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 


But will the other members of the school have a 
longer day, or even so long? So far as they have 
advanced any branch of natural science, of history, 
or of political economy, their names will live, and 
go down with their discoveries to future generations. 
But it is the mistake of these men, that because they 
are eminent in some one or two branches of science, 
say natural history or geology, they are therefore 
fitted to speculate on all the sciences, on the whole 
history and destiny of mankind, and to settle or un- 
settle for ever all the questions bearing on the rela- 
tions of the universe to its Maker. For this work, 
some of them seem to me to have no aptitude and no 
calling. Iam sure that, in the wide fields of theol- 
ogy and philosophy, they are as ignorant as Comte 
was in the domains of mathematics and experimental 
science. Their generalizations here have a rash- 
ness which would not be tolerated for one instant in 
the special fields of science in which they. have 
made discoveries. The time is not far off when 
they, too, will come to their level, which will be con- 
siderably lower than their present eminence. 

In my early Lectures in this series, I met their 
fundamental principles. It is possible that some 
have felt that in these I dwelt too much on certain 
abstract points about knowledge and existence. 
But I did it of design. I had powerful antagonists 
to meet, and I had to prepare my weapons with 
care. I labored to show that the mind begins its 
intelligent acts with knowledge, a knowledge of 
things. I have no objection to call it a knowledge 


WAY TO MEET POSITIVISM. 175 


of phenomena; but, by phenomena in that case, I 
mean not phenomena apart from things, which is a 
mere abstraction, but things as appearing. ‘The 
mind knows relations, but not relations between 
things unknown, which is impossible, but relations 
between things known so far known. Beginning 
with knowledge, what it reaches by generalization 
is also knowledge, and a knowledge of realities. 
Beginning with intuitive knowledge, it adds to it by 
logical processes ; and what it gains is also knowl 

edge. Its intuitive power is confined within very 
stringent limits. In particular, it has no @ przore 
forms to impose on things. It does not override 
experience. It simply gives us a certain knowledge 
of things. Its main office is to enable us to gain 
experience, and to assure us that the knowledge we 
thus gain is of real things. Mr. Mill, proceeding 
on a different theory, declares—and his theory 
requires him to do so—that there may be worlds 
‘in which two and two make five, in which parallel 
lines meet, in which a straight line may return upon 
itself and enclose a space, and in which there may be 
effects without a cause. In all this he is consistent : 
it is the logical consequence of his theory. And 
you can meet him only by undermining his theory. 
This is what I endeavored to do in previous Lect- 
ures. On his principles, you cannot prove the 
existence of God, just as you cannot prove that two 
and two make four in the planet Jupiter, or that a 
straight line may not enclose a space in the constel- 
lation Orion. For aught that this theory can say to 


176 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 


the contrary, it may be an accepted axiom in the 
universities of the Dog Star that parallel lines may 
and must meet if prolonged sufficiently far, and not 
coming in the way of a little planet called Earth — 
seen by a telescope of monster power — where a 
small mortal called man says, in his ignorance, that 
parallel lines cannot meet. I admit that if we cannot 
prove that two and two make four everywhere, we 
may also be unable to prove that every effect has a 
cause, or that this world has had a cause. But if, 
as Aristotle says, a man’s mind is organized to dis- 
cover truth, and truth be not beyond his reach, then 
I hold that we are entitled to say that in all times 
and in every place two and two make four, anda 
thing effected implies a power effecting it, and that 
the existence of benevolent affections in man implies 
benevolence in Him who planted them there, and 
that the Moral Law in the heart implies a Moral 
Governor. The spectroscope directed to that star, 
which takes a hundred thousand years to send its 
light to the earth, tells us that these effects could 
not be produced on the instrument, unless there 
were hydrogen and sodium in that star; and Iam 
constrained to believe, on the principle of cause and 
effect, that it speaks the truth. And when I discover 
that beautiful adjustment in the eye which enables 
it to receive light from that distant star, J am as 
sure that there has been a designing mind construct- 
ing it, as | am that there has been an intelligence 
planning and making that spectroscope. These 
same principles that entitle us to argue that there 


CONSEQUENCES OF POSITIVISM. 174 


is a God authorize us to say that we so far know that 
God, —the adequate cause of the effects we per- 
ceive, the source of that power we feel in ourselves 
and see exhibited on the earth, the fountain of that 
benevolence from which our affections flow as petty 
rills, the authority from which the moral power in 
us derives its authority. 

Having examined the theory, I believe fairly and 
logically, we may now look for a moment at its con- 
sequences, speculative, moral, and practical. What 
have we left according to this new philosophy? 
We have a series of feelings aware of itself and 
permanent, or rather prolonged; and we have an 
association of sensations, and perceived resem- 
blances and possibilities of sensations. Truth can be 
nothing more than an accordance of our ideas with 
sensations and laws of the association of sensations ; 
which sensations come we know not whence, and 
are associated by resemblances existing we know 
not how; or more frequently by contiguity, with no 
relation of reason, with no connection in the nature 
of things, and being very possibly altogether fortui- 
tous or absolutely fatalistic. The sensations and 
associations of sensation generate ideas and beliefs 
which do not, however, either in themselves or their 
mode of formation, generate any reality. This is 
the consequence on Mr. Mill’s theory ; and on Mr. 
Spencer’s it is development out of a thing unknown, 
according to an absolute fatalism. And is this the 
sum of what has been gained by the highest science 
of the nineteenth century? Can this satisfy the 

RS * 


178 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 


wants of the soul seeking truth, yearning for reality, 
seeking for light as plants do in the dark cellar, and 
striving towards it, being sure that it exists and is 
to be found? Does it not undermine every belief 
in goodness, in affection, in beauty, and in truth, to 
which men have ever clung? Does it not leave the 
soul as the moon is supposed to be left, and as 
some think the earth will be ultimately left, with 
its rocks, its extinct volcanoes, but without atmos- 
phere, without water, without life? Diodorus the 
Slow, after writing his profound treatise on the 
Awful Nothing, died in despair; and, deprived of 
all their deepest instincts and highest hopes, I feel 
as if there was nothing left for those who accept 
this theory of nescience but to do the same. 

This, then, is the gulf to which we have come. 
It is as well that young men entering on the path 
should know what is the swamp in which it termi- 
nates. Some who have gone so far will draw back. 
But they will not fall back upon the icy crystals 
constructed by Channing, or the melted snow of 
Parker and Emerson. Yet they cannot stand where 
they now do. If they do not draw back, they must 
go forward; and they will find that, beneath this 
deep, there is a lower deep still. This deep is 
Materialism, which I mean to examine in my next 
Lecture. 


ITs 


MATERIALISM. — CIRCUMSTANCES FAVORING IT. — PARTS OF 
THE BODY MOST INTIMATELY CONNECTED WITH MENTAL 
ACTION. — GROSSER AND MORE REFINED FORMS OF Ma- 
TERIALISM. — BUCHNER, MAUDESLEY, BAIN, HUXLEY, 
TYNDALL, SPENCER. — OBJECTIONS TO MATERIALISM. — 
.MIND NOT ONE OF THE CORRELATED PHYSICAL FORCES. 


ie my last Lecture I gave a sketch of the progress 
of Free Thought in this country, and showed 
that it is tending to sink towards Positivism. But 
this negative philosophy cannot last any great length 
of time. Persons cannot live long, for they cannot 
breathe, in a vacuum. A terrible wind will rush in 
to fill up the void when it begins to be felt. If men’s 
heads do not discover the fallacy, their hearts will 
turn away from the emptiness. But, meanwhile, 
the movement has its course to run; and, as it does 
so, it will freeze, by its coldness, much blood at the 
heart, which would otherwise be felt vitally in every 
member of the frame and go forth in practical 
activity ; nay, as it is dragged along, it may crush 
much life under its Juggernaut wheels. Before it 
closes its course it must assume another form: it 
will become a prevailing Materialism. 
A number of concurring circumstances favor this 
‘tendency. Thus our young thinkers have come 


18O NATURAL THEOLOGY. 


to see the utter futility of the whole @ frzorz philos- 
ophy of the age now passing away, and are pre- 
pared for a reaction, in which the ebb will be as 
strong as the previous tide. It has ever been the 
great error and sin of the speculative rational phi- 
losophy that it has been expending its strength in 
building up in one age ingenious theories which 
the next age proceeds to take down. This has 
produced the sentiment first expressed by Less- 
ing, and so extensively adopted in the present day : 
“It is not truth which makes man worthy, but the 
striving after truth. If God in his right hand held 
every truth, and in his left hand the one inward 
impulse after truth, although with the condition that 
I should err for ever, and bade me choose, I would 
humbly incline to his left, saying, O Father, give 
me that: pure Faith is for thee alone.” There is 
a wide-spread idea, favored very much by the way 
in which the department has been taught, that phi- 
losophy is at best a mere gymnastic, exercising the 
faculties, but not capable of revealing truth; and 
people say that whatever may have been the need 
and the use of such Indian clubs and parallel bars 
in the Middle Ages, we do not require them now, 
when we have such pleasant open-air exercise in 
the natural sciences, which do reveal truth. Will 
men continue to search after truth when it has been 
discovered, and is allowed, that truth cannot be 
found? ‘The father, in the fable, got his sons to dig 
in the field in the hope of finding a treasure: but 
they would not have done this, had they thought 


PeGwOsIyi we. ? (OL PHYSICS, 181 


there was no treasure; and I am sure they would not 
have been led by like motives to dig a second field. 
Such dialectic activity wastes the energy, without in- 
creasing the strength. He who thus fights is like one 
beating the air; and his exertion ends not in bracing 
and exhilaration, but in weariness and restlessness. 
The bird which has been buffeting the wind on the 
wi:d waste of the ocean will alight on the first bare 
rock or mast-top it falls in with. Persons who have 
been cheated by those who promised to give them 
every thing, but really gave them nothing, will be 
ready to trust the first man who bestows on them 
ever so smalla boon. So there are youths in our 
day, who, feeling as if metaphysics could give them 
nothing, are occupying themselves exclusively with 
the baldest physics. 

Then, there is the exclusive study of the material 
sciences in so many of our educational institutions. 
I say exclusive, not extensive; for I rejoice in the 
extensive study of natural science, and believe that 
every settled branch of knowledge should have a 
place in every academic institution. But if we would 
not produce a one-sided — that is, a malformed — set 
of minds, we must have other studies mingled with 
them. In this country, a Bachelor’s Degree, which 
used to mean that the youth was a scholar with 
varied accomplishments in literature, and in mental 
as well as natural science, can now be had with 
little or no knowledge of mind or its laws. I rejoice 
in the establishment of medical schools, and the 
multiplication of scientific schools; but steps should 


182 WATURALATOHEOLOGI: 


be taken to secure that in these there also be 
instruction in branches fitted to cultivate and refine 
the taste, and that our young men be reminded 
that they have souls, which they are very apt to 
forget when their attention is engrossed with the 
motions of stars or the motions of molecules, with 
the flesh, the bones, the brain. ‘The cry opine 
times is for what they call fractzcal studies to pre- 
pare young men for life; but fathers may find that 
their sons, after all, are not just prepared for life 
with its temptations, when they have no instruction in 
the duties they owe to their own souls and to God. 

The result of all this is the creation of a certain 
spirit. For there is such a thing as the spirit of the 
age, — such a thing as the spirit of a college, more 
powerful than the influence of all teachers. There 
are susceptible youths who catch the spirit of the 
times, as lake waters take the hue of the sky above, 
or as worms take the dye of the herbage they feed 
on. Just as there was a great run two ages ago 
towards rationalism, and an age ago towards intul- 
tionalism, so there is a corresponding set of youths 
in our day who will become Comtists, or Maillites, 
or Spencerites, or even Huxleyites: the demand 
will create the supply; and they will find able men 
to lead them on over the dreary plain strewn with 
the skeletons of those who have there wandered 
and perished. 

Any observant man may see the tide sweeping 
along. Materialism was a prevailing creed in 
France during the whole period of the repression 


MATERIALISM IN EUROPE. 183 


of thought under the 7égvme of Louis Napoleon, and 
was very agreeable to the demz-monde which ruled 
the manners and morals of Paris, and prepared the 
way for the present humiliation of that country. 
“Vive la Matérialisme” has been shouted from a 
number of their schools of medicine at their open- 
ings and public exhibitions. In Germany, theology 
is becoming orthodox in the theological Faculties, 
and a high philosophy has still a place in some of 
the universities; but, for a number of years, mate- 
rialism has had a considerable acceptance among a 
set of able physiologists, among medical men and 
schoolmasters. In England, there are a thousand 
influences opposing it in the religion of the country, 
in the moral tone long sustained among the people, 
and become hereditary: but there is an active 
school of philosophy exercising a power over the 
young men, soon to become the influential men of 
the country; and this is strongly set in current 
towards sensationalism and positivism, which are 
certain to end in materialism. There are like 
agencies resisting the entrance and the progress 
of the materialistic school in this country, and the 
higher Unitarians heartily unite at this point with 
the Evangelicals; but still there are underground 
rumblings, which show that an earthquake is at 
hand, in the predilections of some of our physical 
inquirers and medical schools, sure to be favored by 
and to find acceptance with the votaries of pleasure, 
increasing among us with our wealth, and more 
rapidly than our wealth. / 


184 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 


This materialism will require to be met. In 
meeting it, it will be proper to begin with admitting 
that there is a close and intimate connection in this 
present state of things between mind and body. 
This has been all along seen and allowed by the 
most determined spiritualists. Man does not con- 
sist of mind alone: he consists of soul and body. 
This is all that modern physiology has established, 
throwing a little, and only a little, light upon it; no, 
not on the connection between soul and body, but 
on the bodily organs most intimately connected 
with mental action. 

It is shown that in the animal body there is an 
Automatic System, consisting of ganglia with re- 
ticulated nerves, some fibres of which conduct tow- 
ards the centre, others outwards from the ganglia to 
muscles: an impression made upon the former, the 
afferent fibres, conducted inward to the centre, is 
followed by an action outward through afferent 
nerves, resulting in motion. Thus, on pricking the 
leg of a frog, there is an action from the periphery 
to the centre of the ganglion, and again an action 
outwards, and the leg is drawn in. ‘These ganglia 
serve most important purposes in the lower animals, 
as in bees and articulated animals generally, where 
they carry on the motions of the creature. But they 
are found alsoin man. ‘They run along the spinal 
cord, and there is no scientific proof — though some 
allege that there is—that their action is accompa- 
nied with sensation or with will. It has always 
appeared to me that we may justifiably discover final 


SENSORI-MOTOR SYSTEM. 185 


cause in this complicated arrangement for enabling 
the lower creatures, and even human beings, to per- 
form certain needful motions, without the effort and 
the labor of the reason and the will. All this is 
evidently a mere organic apparatus, and we do not 
discover in it any manifestation of mental action. 

It is shown that there is a Sensori-Motor appa- 
ratus. Here we have no will, but we have sensation. 
Thus, in sneezing and coughing, the act is not vol- 
untary ; but we feel it. We have examples of the 
same kind in the quick withdrawal of the hand 
when it is touched with a hot iron; in the cry which 
excessive pain calls forth; in the distortion of :the 
face on account of an offensive taste or smell; in 
the closing of the eyes when a strong light falls on 
them; and in the start produced by a loud sound. 
Under the same head may be placed the marvellous 
adjustment of the human eye to the distance of 
objects, effected by a change in the convexity of the 
lens or cornea, together with an alteration in the 
direction of the axes of the eyes. This, too, is a 
beautiful provision for the convenience and comfort 
of the creature, whereby many necessary acts are 
performed without any labor of the will. Except 
in regard to the sensation felt, —in the ¢halam?é 
opiict, as some think,—there is no special mental 
action or affection. 

But in the higher animals there is a farther pro- 
vision. Above the automatic process in the spinal 
cord, ab:ve the sensory centre, at the base of the 
brain are the two Cerebral Hemispheres. These 


186 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 


brain hemispheres have no sensation: they can be 
pared off without any pain being felt. They can- 
not produce motion directly : they can do so only by 
acting directly, or indirectly, through the motor 
nerves upon the muscular system. We are now in 
the close proximity of proper mental action. We 
have come to the seat of memory, of intellect, and 
of will. The brain is composed of a gray matter 
and a white matter. Of these the gray substance 
is most intimately connected with mental action. 
That gray matter may be seen upon the surface of 
the two hemispheres of the brain, and exists in the 
shape of minute cells. It may be allowed that 
the operations of the intellect are intimately con- 
nected with the minute cells of the cortical layers. 
Without the concurrence of those cells, or rather 
perhaps of the forces operating in them, and which 
they direct, there can be no healthy intellectual 
action. They supply something which, as a con- 
cause, is necessary to mental action. When they 
are deranged, the operations of the mind are apt to 
be deranged. It may be farther allowed that there 
is a general, though by no means an invariable, 
correspondence between the size of the hemispheres, 
and still more the convolution of the hemispheres, 
and the intellectual strength. So far physiology 
can carry us. This is the form which the old ex- 
pression of the connection between mind and body 
should take in our day, —a dependence of intellect 
and will on the cortical layers and contained cells 
and forces of the brain hemispheres. But physi- 


CONNECTION OF BODY AND MIND. 187 


ology can go no farther. “So exquisitely delicate, 
however,” says Dr. Maudesley, “are the organic 
processes of mental development which take place 
in the minute cells of the cortical layers, that they 
are certainly, so far as our present means of inves- 
tigation reach, quite impenetrable to the senses: 
the mysteries of their secret operations cannot be 
unravelled.” * 

So the question remains where it was before. 
All this amounts to nothing more than the old state- 
ment that in the present order of things mind is so 
far dependent on the bodily organism. Professor 
' Tyndall is candidly confessing the truth, when he 
says, “ The problem of the connection of soul and 
body is as insoluble in its modern form as it was in 
the pre-scientific ages.” It may be maintained, with 
great show of reason, that the brain-case is the 
mere instrument of the mind to enable it to perform 
its function, even as the automatic system is an 
apparatus to enable the animal to move, and the 
sensori-motor system is a process to warn it of 
danger. From all this it does not follow that the 
cell, or cell-power, constitutes thought. It does not 
tend to show that the physical power which circu- 
lates in the cell becomes in the cell an idea, or 
recollection, or feeling, or moral approbation, or 
will. It may be, after all, the mere organ by which 
the mind communicates with the body, and through 
the body with the external world. No one is enti- 
tled to say that the brain, or the forces in it, generate 


* Phys. & Path. of Mind, p. 124. 


188 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 


mind. It might be nearer the truth to affirm that 
mental action forms the gray substance, and forms 
it to suit its purposes. Certain it is, that intellec- 
tual exercise enlarges the brain and makes it more 
convoluted, and gives it greater capacity and apti- 
tude. 

I must endeavor to furnish a sketch of the forms 
which Materialism has assumed of late years. First, 
I must refer to its grosser shapes. They are 
scarcely worthy of being noticed before such an 
audience as this, for their enormous fallacies will at 
once be seen. Still, it is necessary to state them, 
and so far expose them; for these are, after all, the 
forms in which the doctrine is held by the great 
body of materialists. It is thus that it is presented 
to our young men, to medical students, and others. 
And this is the common sewer into which the finer 
forms, which may amuse refined minds for a time, 
must ultimately flow. They are expressed in the 
brief sentence of Cabanis, that “the brain secretes 
thought as the liver secretes bile.” Coming to our 
day, we find Vogt adopting this statement: 
“Thought stands in the same relation to the brain 
as bile to the liver.” Moleschott says that “thought 
is a motion of matter.” We may take, as represent- 
ative of this school, Bitchner, whose work, “ Force 
and Matter,” has been translated into English, and 
circulated widely in Great Britain and America. 
No doubt his work is very superficial, but it is 
relished all the more by multitudes who do not wish 
to be troubled with deep philosophical discussions. 


BUCHNER. 189 


And then he is clear and outspoken and dogmatic, 
uttering his dicta as if they could not be disputed. 
“The soul is the product of a peculiar combination 
of matter.”—“In the same manner as the steam en- 
gine produces motion, so does the organic compli- 
caticn of force-endowed materials produce, in the 
animal body, a sum of effects so interwoven as to 
become a unit, and is then by us called spirit.”— 
“As there is no bile without liver, so there is no 
thought without brain.” But he thinks that this 
comparison gives a greater permanence to mind 
than it is entitled to. “The secretion of the liver 
and kidneys proceeds imperceptibly, and produces a 
tangible substance.” It is different with thought as 
the product of the brain. “Mental activity is a 
function of the cerebral substance.”—“ It is emitted 
by the brain as sounds are by the mouth, as music is 
by the organ,” and so has no such permanence as 
the bile has. It is a breath which exists as long 
as the lungs act, but which vanishes when they 
cease to play. Of this doctrine it may be said that 
it does not require any stretch of mind to understand 
it. ‘The organ plays and produces music, the music 
of Mozart and Beethoven; the brain plays and pro- 
duces the thought, the thoughts of Shakspeare and 
Newton. This settles every thing, and avoids all 
troublesome questions. And, as the brain does not 
play after death, so there is no proof that there is 
any mind existing after the dissolution of the body. 


‘“*To sleep! perchance to dream; — ay, there’s the rub.” 


190 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 


But this “rub” is polished off, for when the brain 
is dissolved in dust the power of dreaming is gone; 
and the most wicked, the most fleshly materialist, 
who has seduced one fair virgin after another, need 
not be troubled with any fear as to the second death, 
or the worm that never dies, for there is no worm 
but the worm that feeds on the body, and it dies 
when it has fed on the body and reduced it to cor- 
ruption. Bichner quotes, with a feeling of profound 
admiration, the saying of the dissolute Mirabeau: 
YDeathwis an eternal sleép” 

I defer to a later part of my Lecture the argu- 
ments against Materialism in every form. But I 
cannot avoid the exposure of this weak theory when 
itis before us. We can comprehend how the liver 
produces bile out of itself and the matter with 
which it comes in contact: the bile is the result of 
the liver and the matter brought to the liver, and, 
no doubt, partakes of the nature of both, —is, in 
fact, the old agents in a new form. The liver has 
acted on the matter, and bile is the result. But when 
the soft, pulpy substance, the brain, is supposed to 
produce thought, there is surely a process of a dif- 
ferent kind... There is something in) the getem 
which is not in the cause, nor in any of the constit- 
uents of the brain, nor in all the constituents «put 
together. “ Without phosphorus, no thought,’ is 
one of the axioms of the school. Later and more 
careful inquiry seems to show that phosphorus is not 
so intimately connected with thought as physiolo- 
gists have been accustomed to say; but if phospho- 


MAUDESLEY. 1g! 


rus could produce thought, —say the rapt visions 
of Isaiah or Milton, — it would be a cause producing 
an effect not in itself, altogether unlike itself. 

The other illustration, that from the organ pro- 
ducing music, is more plausible for Buchner’s pur- 
pose, as it might seem as if the music were so unlike 
the instrument from which it comes. But we have 
only to determine precisely what it is that the organ 
produces, to find the loose analogy entirely to fail. 
What the organ produces is simply an orderly mo- 
tion. The vibrations in the tubes, excited by the 
performer, produce a certain motion in the air which 
comes to our ear. This is really all that is done by 
the organ: it is a vibraticn in the instrument, pro- 
ducing a vibration in the external air. As to what 
follows—the pleasant sensation in the ear, and the 
swelling emotions in the mind, of sympathy, sor- 
row, joy, or admiration, —these are the product, 
not of the organ, but of a highly organized ear, and 
a finely strung mind. ‘The motion in the organ, 
producing motion in the air, is certainly no evi- 
dence that the brain can generate thought. 

I now turn to a much more refined writer. Dr. 
Maudesley has evidently considerable literary abil- 
ity: he has read and he appreciates Goethe and 
poets generally, specially those of the more sen- 
suous school. He has been resident physician of 
the Manchester Royal Lunatic Hospital, and has 
studied the causes of insanity. He believes that 
mental insanity arises from pathological disturb- 
ances, —in short, from bodily causes; and he has 


192 NATORAL THEOLOGT. 


evidently searched these with care, and has brought 
under our notice, in his “ Physiology and Pathology 
of Mind,” a curious set of phenomena, illustrating 
the influence of a diseased brain upon the operations 
of the mind. But he has been guilty of the inex- 
cusable blunder of supposing that when he has. 
stated these things, commonly without offering any 
explanation of them, he has explained the whole 
phenomena of the mind. He is like one who would 
speculate on the whole constitution of Great Britain 
or the United States, after having made himself 
acquainted with the cases that come before a police 
court. In his “Body and Mind,” being Lectures 
delivered before the Royal College of Physicians, 
he studiously leaves on the minds of his medical 
hearers the impression that because he can explain 
certain morbid affections of the mind by bodily 
causes, especially at the critical periods of life, 
therefore he can account, by physiological proc- 
esses, for the production of all our ideas, senti- 
ments, beliefs, and judgments. 

He is for ever denouncing the old metaphysics, 
and all who would study the mind by self-conscious- 
ness, or internal observation. “Psychology cannot, 
in fact, be truly inductive, unless it is studied objec- 
tively ;” that is, physiologically, in the brain and 
nervous system. He acknowledges, “No one pre- 
tends that physiology can, for many years to come, 
furnish the complete data of a positive mental 
science: all that it can at present do is to over- 
throw the data of a false psychology.” I agree 


CHARGE AGAINST CONSCIOUSNESS. 193 


with him that physiology has not been able to con- 
struct a mental science; and I believe it will never 
be able to do so, —though it may, and I believe 
will, greatly aid those who examine the mind by 
self-consciousness. But he thinks it has undermined 
the views entertained by those attached to the old 
psychology. In particular, he thinks that he can 
show that self-consciousness deceives. This is a bold 
attempt, and has seldom been made by any phi- 
losopher. David Hume himself was too shrewd 
to try to cast doubts on the veracity of conscious- 
ness. Dr. Maudesley’s charges of falsity against 
self-consciousness proceed on an entire misappre- 
hension of the nature of the testimony which it 
gives. He makes the witness lie, only by pervert- 
ing his declarations and making him say what he 
never said. “Consciousness can never be a valid 
and unprejudiced witness; for although it testifies 
to the existence of a particular mental modification, 
yet, when that modification has any thing of a mor- 
bid character, consciousness is affected by the taint 
and is morbid also. Accordingly, the lunatic ap- 
peals to the evidence of his own consciousness for 
the truth of his hallucination or delusion, and insists 
that he has as sure evidence of its reality as he has 
of the argument of any one who may try to con- 
vince him of his error; and is he not right from a 
subjective stand-point? ‘To one who has vertigo 
the world turns round.” —“ Is it not supremely ridic- 
ulous that, while we cannot trust consciousness, as 
to whether we are hot or cold, we should be content 
9 


I94 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 


to rely entirely on its evidence in the complex phe- 
nomena of our highest mental activity?” * This 
whole statement proceeds on so entire a misappre- 
hension of the testimony given by self-conscious- 
ness, that the student of philosophy who would fall 
into it in any of our American colleges would 
infallibly be rejected at an examination. Self-con- 
sciousness does not profess to reveal what is passing 
without us, but what is passing within; it tells us 
when we feel cold that we do feel cold; but cer- 
tainly does not say at what point the thermometer 
stands. It testifies, and this truly, that the lunatic 
imagines that he sees a figure, but does not say 
whether this. figure is a reality or a spectre. In 
trying to prove that consciousness deceives, Dr. 
Maudesley has only shown that he has been deceived 
himself, and is seeking to deceive us, by an entire 
misapprehension of what consciousness says. 

He has thus failed, utterly and palpably, in show- 
ing that consciousness is a liar. The greatest scep- 
tics have allowed that we must trust consciousness. 
And so we will trust it, notwithstanding Dr. Maudes- 
ley’s allegations against it. And there is one point 
on which consciousness speaks, and speaks authori- 
tatively, and will allow no man to think or believe 
otherwise. It declares clearly and unequivocally 
that man is @ person, a distinct person, — distinct 
from all other persons and all other objects, — dis- 
tinct from the nerves and cells of the brain. It 
declares, too, —with the aid of memory, —that there 


* Physiology and Pathology of Mind, p. 25. 


UNITY OF THE SOUL. 195 


is a unity and identity of person, that I am the 
same to-day as I was yesterday, —the same now as 
I was as far back as memory can go. It asserts of 
itself, amid all shiftings of surrounding circum- 
stances, amid all changes in the body or in the 
brain, that itis one and the same. Whatever else 
is true, this is and must be true; and we cannot be 
made to believe or think otherwise. 

Dr. Maudesley sets himself determinedly against 
the doctrine of the unity of the soul. It is a unity 
only as a house is one, asa tree is one. A house is 
one only by the collocation of its several parts, —- 
timbers, nails, and slates: a tree is one only by the 
co-operation of its component elements and mem- 
bers. So the soul is one only by the combination 
and co-operation of the brain-cells, and is in fact 
composed of essentially different elements, or parts, 
which shift from year to year, —in fact, from moment 
to moment; and its whole unity may be dissolved 
by the dissolution of the brain-cells, which are its 
constituents. It is vain to expect an immortality 
for such a soul when the parts are separated by the 
death of the body; in fact, any unity which it has 
in this life is altogether fictitious and delusive. 
Now, in all this, Dr. Maudesley is opposing an 
intuitive conviction of the mind as to the unity and 
personality of self, which is far more certain than 
any truth he has been able to establish by physio- 
logical investigation. ‘This conviction at once sets 
aside —I do not say any physiological fact — but 
the perversely wrong inferences which he has 


1960 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 


drawn from his facts, by refusing to combine the 
evidence of self-consciousness with the evidence 
got from the senses. 

Dr. Maudesley identifies the brain-cells, and the 
forces operating in them, with mental operations. 
Somehow or other (he is at no pains to tell us how) 
the action produced in the body by external ob- 
jects — say by a rose or lily before us — goes up into 
the brain-case with its cells, and there becomes 
thoughts, fancies, feelings. Then he has a theory 
about these ideas and feelings leaving behind them 
certain vestdua, which become organized in the 
nervous centres. These veszdua play, with him, a 
very important part; in fact, come to constitute the 
Ego, to constitute what is permanent in mind. The 
whole process of manufacturing ideas in this brain 
work-shop becomes, with him, a very simple one. 
See how easily they appear, —as easily as sheets 
from a paper mill: “As in reflex action of the spinal 
cord, the residual force, which was over and above 
what passed directly outwards in the reaction, trav- 
elled upwards to the sexsorzum commune and excited 
sensation ; and as in sensori-motor action the resid- 
ual force, which was over and above what passed 
outwards in the reaction, travelled up to the cortical 
cells, and gave rise to an idea: so in ideational 
action [that is, the formation of ideas] the force 
which does not pass, or the residual force which 
may be over and above what does pass immediately 
outwards in the reaction, abides in action in the cor- 
tical centres, and passes therein from cell to cell.” 


BRAIN-CELLS AND THOUGHT. 197 


Thus he makes “the formation of an idea an organic 
process.” It is strange that so accomplished a man 
does not see what unfilled-up gaps there are in this 
theoretical process. A man has before him the 
grave of Washington. There is a mound of earth 
with grass upon it: rays of light come from it, and 
form an image on the retina of the eye, which raises 
an action in the optic nerve. This is all the length 
that the physiologist can trace it. But Dr. Maudes- 
ley can carry it up to the brain-cells, and turn it 
into an idea of the mound of earth and grass; can 
make it declare that this is a grave, and Washing- 
ton’s grave; and then become a thought of his calm, 
unerring judgment, and his disinterested patriotism, 
—all by a current which, while it travels on, finds 
that it is stayed, and, as it is stayed, finds that what 
“does not pass, or the residual force which may be 
over and above,” becomes an idea of Washington’s 
grave, and Washington himself, and his military 
and administrative skill, with an admiration of his 
unselfish character and high aims. When sheets 
of paper come out of the paper-mill, we have only 
what was potentially in the rags, with the water and 
the other matters employed to purify them; but here 
we have rays of light, that is, vibrations of air reach- 
ing the eye, and these come out the approbation of 
duty and of goodness. Verily, this beats the most 
astonishing trick ever performed by necromancer, 
when he turns a rod into a serpent; or by juggler, 
when he puts in a piece of cloth into a bag and it 
becomes an egg, or puts in an egg and brings out a 


198 NATURAL ‘THEOLOGY. 


fowl. People trained in a rigid, inductive logic will 
insist that there must be steps in this process which 
he has kept out of sight; that there is a wide interval 
between a residual physical force left in cells, and 
the idea of consistency of character, and singleness 
of purpose, and beneficence of intention. Yet this 
is the cool way in which he forms our ideas, even 
the highest: “The cells of the central ganglia do in 
reality idealize [that is, form ideas out of ] the sen- 
sory perceptions, grasping what is essential in them, 
and suppressing or rejecting the unessential: they 
mould them by their plastic faculty into the organic 
unity of an idea, in accordance with fundamental 
laws.” I would like to know how brain-cells should 
know what is “essential” in Washington’s charac- 
ter, and reject the “unessential.” It all takes place 
“in accordance with fundamental laws;” but these 
laws are of a very different kind from those of gan- 
glia and cells: they are, in fact, mental and not 
material laws. He might do well to attend to the 
more scientific statement of Professor Tyndall: “I 
do not think that the materialist is entitled to say 
that his molecular grouping and his molecular mo- 
tions explain every thing. In reality, they explain 
nothing. The utmost he can affirm is the associa- 
tion of the two classes of phenomena, of whose real 
bond of union he is in absolute ignorance. The 
problem of the connection of soul and body is as 
insoluble in its modern form as it was in the pre- 
scientific ages.” 

We now turn to a higher school of materialists, 


ACTIVITY OF MATTER. 199 


who will not, for various reasons, let themselves be 
called materialists, not only from the unhappy asso- 
ciations of the name, but from profounder reasons. 
Some of them will not allow themselves to be so 
denominated because they do not take the gross 
views of matter which are generally entertained. 
We have found Professor Tyndall referring to this 
when he finds a difficulty in getting mind out of star 
dust. Matter, say the whole of the school I am now 
referring to, is something vastly higher in itself than 
what it is supposed to be in the popular apprehen- 
sions gendered by religious prejudices, which repre- 
sent the body and matter as altogether inert and 
vile and despicable. Matter, they show, has high 
qualities: it has immense, indeed immeasurable, 
activity, and lofty powers of attraction and repul- 
sion and assimilation ; and they hint, if they do not 
assert, that it may have the power of fashioning 
ideas and pronouncing judgments, moral and intel- 
lectual. Now I admit freely that matter is not that 
inert substance which it has often been represented 
as being. Matter has essential activities: its atoms 
and its worlds are in a state of continual motion. 
The earth, sun, and moon, and stars are all flying 
through space with incredible velocity; and within 
every piece of earth, stone, and wodd, there is as 
constant a motion of the particles as there is of the 
planets in their orbits, or of bees in the hive. Every 
change-of heat in the temperature of a room makes 
a change in the internal structure of every object in 
it. I give upthe idea of matter being passive. And 


200 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 


I repudiate the idea that our bodies are only the 
sources of evil, and to be despised. This notion came 
from certain Eastern theosophists, and was adopted 
by certain Christian mystics, and sanctioned by the 
Church in the ages when monasticism prevailed; 
but is not countenanced in Scripture, which repre- 
sents the body as one of the constituents of man, 
which gives Christ a body, and unites soul and 
body at the resurrection, in order to enjoy full frui- 
tion. I do not seek to lower or disparage the capac- 
ities of body. I believe it has properties many and 
various. But there is no proof that thinking is one 
of these properties. We have seen in Lecture IV., 
jerst, that we know body and mind by different 
organs: we know body by the senses; we know 
mind by self-consciousness. We cannot perceive 
mind, or thought, or moral sentiment, by the eye, 
the ear, the touch, or any of the senses.. And then, 
secondly, we know them as. possessing different 
properties. We know body as extended in three 
dimensions, and resisting our energy and the en- 
trance of another body into the same space. But 
we do not know mind as having length, breadth, 
and thickness, and as either penetrable or impene- 
trable. Again, we know mind as perceiving, 
judging, reasoning, desiring, willing, and we do 
not know matter as exercising these qualities. As 
knowing them thus by different organs, and as dif- 
ferent in themselves, if there are any who hold them 
to be the same, the burden of proof must lie on 
them. And they cannot prove this by so spiritual- 


SPIRITUALIZING OF BODY. 201 


izing matter as to make it discharge the functions 
of mind. However etherealized, matter is still mat- 
ter, still occupies space, still resists our energy, has 
bulk and shape, can be weighed and measured; 
and there is no proof that it can form ideas, — say 
the ideas of the true, the beautiful, and the good. 
In fact, those who profess thus to spiritualize mat- 
ter so as to make it capable of performing mental 
operations, so as to make it capable of constructing 
the poetry of Homer and Dante, and the sciences 
of astronomy and mathematics, are found in the 
end to confine its powers within the very narrowest 
limits ; in fact, making it possess merely the power 
of molecular motion under forces which are, afte1 
all, merely the sum of the motion, real or potential. 
“All vital action,” says Professor Huxley, “is the 
result of the molecular forces of the protoplasm 
which displays it.” He adds, “And, if so, it must 
be true, in the same sense and to the same extent, 
that the thoughts to which I am giving utterance, 
and your thoughts regarding them, are the expression 
of molecular changes in that matter of life, which 
is the source of our other vital phenomena;” and 
he says that “even those manifestations of intellect, 
of feeling, and of will, which we rightly name the 
higher faculties,” are known, “to every one but the 
subject of them,” only as “transitory changes in 
the relative positions of the part of the body.” 
Upon this I say that the subject of them knows 
them to be different; and, as knowing them to be 
different in himself, he knows them to be something 
g* 


202 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 


higher in others than “ mere changes in the relative 
positions of the body.” But I quote the language 
to show what is to be the end scientifically of all 
this pretended spiritualizing of the body: it ends in 
making thought molecular change, and mind — like 
heat—a mode of motion. This is the issue scien- 
tifically ; and the end practically will be to make 
man to see and argue, that he has no evidence of 
the immortality of the soul; and believing that, he 
is a mere throb in the pulse of life, a mere bubble on 
the ever-moving stream of time: he will feel as if all 
he had to do was to dance along as gayly as possi- 
ble, and get as many of the enjoyments of this 
world as he can, using as his motto and practical 
maxim, “Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we 
die.” 

But Professor Huxley says he is no materialist.* 
“I, individually, am no materialist; but, on the con- 
trary, believe materialism to involve grave philo- 
sophic error.” This brings me to the second ground 
on which these men decline to be called materialists : 
it is because they believe neither.in mind nor matter 
as substances. “For, after all, what do we know of 
this terrible ‘matter,’ except as a name for the un- 
known and hypothetical cause of states of our own 
consciousness? And what do we know of that ‘spirit’ 
over whose threatened extinction by matter a great 
lamentation is arising, like that which was heard at 
the death of Pan, — except that it is also a name for 
an unknown and hypothetical cause or condition of 


* Physical Basis of Life. 


HUXLEY A HUMIST. 203 


the states of consciousness?” You will see now more 
fully the object I had in view in discussing the sub- 
ject of Nescience in Lecture IV. of this course, 
and the importance of showing that we know both 
mind and matter as having real existence and power 
and permanence. Mr. Huxley, in a Lecture on 
Descartes, of whose profound philosophy he has a 
very superficial appreciation, tells us: “Nor is our 
knowledge of any thing we know or feel more ot 
less than a knowledge of states of consciousness.” 
“Strictly speaking the existence of a ‘self’ and of 
a “not self’ are hypotheses by which we account for 
the facts of consciousness.” I have labored to show, 
by an appeal to consciousness, that we have quite 
as direct and immediate and certain knowledge of 
“self” as we have of the “states of self.” We never 
do know a state of consciousness, except as a state 
of self. On the ground on which we deny the one, 
we may deny the other. If we affirm the one, we 
ought also to affirm the other. Some persons have 
been put into a state of high ecstasy because Mr. 
Huxley has so decidedly declared that he is no mate- 
rialist- But he is no materialist simply in this sense : 
that, as he frankly acknowledges, he is a Humist, 
believing neither in matter nor spirit, except as 
“hypothetical assumptions of the highest practical 
value.” But then, unlike Hume, he uses, as he 
confesses, a “materialistic terminology,” which will 
be understood, as it has in fact been understood, 
by his readers in a materialistic sense, which will 
leave its practical impression. He is no materialist, 


204 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 


he proclaims ; but let all men observe that he falls 
back on a “physical basis” of life and of mind. I 
do not see that, logically and consistently, he has 
a right to call in any sort of basis. But men’s 
instincts are stronger than their speculative opin- 
ions; and he has fallen back on a basis, and makes 
this basis not spiritual, as spiritualists do, but phys- 
ical. What he has done scientifically, the mob of 
sensual men will do practically, and will believe in 
nothing but what has a physical basis, but what 
can be seen and felt. The office of the positive 
philosophy will turn out in the end to be to sanction, 
in the name of a philosophy, what is not a philos- 
ophy, but wishes to call itself a philosophy. This 
materialism, whether it calls itself materialism or 
not, will be more or less refined according to the 
character of the minds that adopt it, — more artistic 
and dilettante among the refined, coarse and licen- 
tious among the vulgar. 

The materialists of the higher sort all admit that 
there is such a thing as thought, or mind, and that 
the properties of mind are different from those of 
ordinary matter. But, in one way or other, they 
identify thought with material agency. The conclu- 
sion to which Professor Bain comes, after a historical 
survey of opinions, is: “The arguments for the two 
substances have, we believe, now entirely lost their 
force: they are no longer compatible with ascer- 
tained science and clear thinking. ‘The one sub- 
stance, with two sets of properties, two sides, — the 
physical side and the mental side, a double-faced 


PROFESSOR BAIN. 205 


unity, — would appear to comply with all the exi- 
gencies of the case.” * “Two sides” is, at best, a 
metaphorical phrase, and is altogether material- 
istic. It is not easy to see how benevolence, or the 
idea of goodness, can be one side of a substance, 
while the other side may be heat or figure. Mr. 
Bain is fond of introducing anatomical descriptions 
in the midst of psychological investigations, and 
in doing so leaves the impression that he has 
accounted for intellectual or emotional operations 
by organic affections. But there is ever a wide and 
an unfilled-up gap between the bones, muscles, and 
nerves, which he describes from books of anatomy, 
and the comparisons, emotions, and resolutions of 
the mind. Even when he is successful in showing 
that a sensation originates in an organic affection, 
he fails to mark the difference between the organic 
action and sensation, and he utterly fails in show- 
ing how our ideas — how our higher ideas, such as 
those of duty and charity —can arise out of, or be 
identified: with, cell-force, or brain-force. His divis- 
ion of the Faculties of the Mind is into the Senses 
and the Intellect, the Emotions and the Will. His 
division is, in my opinion, a defective one. It 
allots no separate place to the Moral Faculty, and 
it embraces under Feeling two such diverse phe- 
nomena as sensations of pleasure and pain, and the 
mental emotions of fear, hope, and love. But such 
as it is, itis a division formed by contemplation of 
the workings of the conscious mind, and not by the 


* Fortnightly Review, May, 1866. 


206 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 


x 


observation of the nerves, the cells, or brain, which 
can tell of no such distinctions. No one acquainted 
with later physiology will maintain that he has 
discovered one part of the brain, or one set of 
agencies in the brain, devoted to the Intellect, 
another to Feeling, a third to Will. He narrows 
very much the functions of the Intellect: he admits 
that the mind has the power of perceiving resem- 
blances and differences; but he has not shown that 
such comparison, —the comparison, for instance, 
which groups nature into a grand system, —is the 
product, or even the concomitant, of a group of 
cells, or of co-ordinated nerve currents. 

I am unwilling to look upon Professor Tyndall as 
a materialist, especially after his defence of the exist- 
ence — he does not say the separate existence — of 
mind. His language is guarded: he speaks of the 
phenomena of mind being ever “ associated ” with 
those of matter, and of their “appearing together.” 
“In affirming that the growth of the body is me- 
chanical, and that thought, as exercised by us, has 
its correlative in the physics of the brain, I think 
the position of the materialist is stated as far as that 
position is a tenable one. I think the materialist 
will be able finally to maintain this position against 
all attacks.” And he argues, in behalf of “the 
extreme probability of the hypothesis, that for every 
fact of consciousness, whether in the domain of 
sense, of thought, or of emotion, a certain definite 
molecular condition is set up in the brain; that this 
relation of physics to consciousness is invariable, 


PROFESSOR TYNDALL. 207 


so that, given the state of the brain, the correspond- 
ing thought or feeling might be inferred, or, given 
the thought or feeling, the corresponding state of 
the brain might be inferred.” * Some of these state- 
ments seem to me to go beyond what has been 
determined either by physiology or psychology. 
When the poor man refuses the bribe _prof- 
fered him in his hour of need; when the patriot 
resolves to die for his country, which he is thus able 
to save; when the Christian cherishes the hope of 
heaven in the most trying circumstances, —I have no 
proof that any one could discover all this by simply 
looking at the state of the brain. In the interests 
of science, as well as of philosophy and religion, 
the rash statements of these men must be corrected. 

All attempts to localize the different faculties in 
different parts of the brain, or connect them with 
special nerves, cells, or currents, have utterly failed. 
Some have held that the anterior lobes of the brain 
are the seat of the higher faculties, and the upper 
and posterior lobes the seat of the emotions; but 
no scientific man in our day will venture to say that 
this has been scientifically established; and even if 
it were established, it would merely prove that in- 
tellect is more intimately connected with one part 
of the brain, and emotion with another. Of late 
years, M. Broca has endeavored to show “that the 
third frontal convolution of the left hemisphere of 
the brain is the seat of language;” but others dis- 
pute this, and urge facts which appear to be incon- 


* Address before British Association. 


208 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 


sistent with it. “On the whole,” says Dr. Maudesley, 
“it must be confessed that, so far, we have not any 
certain and definite knowledge of the functions of 
the different parts of the cerebral convolutions. The 
anatomists cannot even agree on any convolution as 
peculiar to man: all that they can surely say is, 
that his convolutions are more complex and less 
symmetrical than those of the monkey.” * 

After this critical survey, I am prepared to lay 
down a few positions fitted to meet Materialism, 
whether of the grosser or more refined form. 

(1) There is the consciousness of the Person- 
ality and the Unity of the Mind. I have no such 
conviction in regard to any material object. I can- 
not open my eyes without seeing the objects before 
me,—that hill and that tree; and I know them to 
exist, but I do not regard them as having a specific 
personality. I can easily believe that the particles 
that compose them may be constantly changing, 
and that they may be broken up and become other 
things, mud or mould. But I believe, and must 
ever believe, myself to have an individuality different 
not only from that hill and that tree, but from that 
changing body of mine, from those nerves and cells 
and brain currents. I can believe, on evidence be- 
ing produced, that these parts of the body are inti- 
mately connected with mental action; I can believe 
that every particle of my body may be changed in 
seven years; but meanwhile I am as assured as 
ever that I who think am different from that organ 


* Physiology and Pathology of Mind, p. 125. 


LAWS OF MIND. 209 


which I think about, and that I have a personality 
such as is not possessed by the cells or vesicles of 
the brain. 

(2) The mind follows laws of its own, which are 
not laws of matter. The laws of body are such as 
these: that matter attracts other matter; that the 
elements combine in certain definite proportions, 
that organized bodies exercise such functions as 
assimilation and absorption. But there are laws of 
mind quite as clearly and certainly established as 
those of matter. In the very act of knowing matter, 
mind is exercising a property very different from 
any property of the matter observed by it. In the 
exercise of the senses, the perception of the figure 
of a body is very different from the figure. Then 
the soul in all its actings has a consciousness of an 
abiding self which it can never get rid of. In 
memory, it looks back upon the past, and recog- 
nizes objects and events not now before it. In 
imagination, it can picture new and fairer scenes 
than any reality, and rise in the contemplation tow- 
ards the good and the perfect. Even in association 
of ideas, there is more than bodily laws; as, for 
instance, when like suggests like, when a scene 
before us suggests a far distant one. In every 
judgment there is comparison, —a comparison of 
two things, one of which may not be present, 
neither of which may be present; and in our higher 
judgments we may connect things by very refined 
analogies. The nature of reasoning has been 
known since the time of Aristotle; and, with a few 


2IO NATURAL THEOLOGY. 


slight differences, there is a wonderful agreement 
among logicians as to the law which regulates it. 
The principle underlying the whole is, that what- 
ever may be predicated of a class may be predi- 
cated of all that is contained in that class. Or take 
the laws of the moral faculties: as when the soul 
contemplates an immoral act, —say the murder of 
a father, —and condemns it, and proclaims that 
right is supreme, and that every thing should give 
way before it. The laws of the emotions are as well 
established as those of the material universe; as, 
for instance, the law that feeling depends on a 
previous idea or conception of good or evil. The 
consciousness of free-will, the feeling of obligation 
and of responsibility, these may be dependent, in 
an inferior sense, on a concurrent organism, but 
they rise to an infinitely higher region. ‘These are 
laws as certainly and definitely established as the 
law of gravitation or of chemical affinity or vital 
assimilation. But these are not laws of body, of 
motion, or of molecules, or electricity, or magnet- 
ism, or vital absorption, but differ from them as 
widely as we can conceive one thing to differ from 
another. 

(3) Mind cannot be shown to be one of the cor- 
related physical forces. I have already noticed the 
grand truth established in our day, that the sum of 
physical force in the universe is always one and the 
same; and that all the varied forces, mechanical, 
chemical, and electric, and probably the vital, are 
modifications of that one force. This can be shown 


THOUGHT NOT MEASURABLE 211 


as to each of the forces by weighing it. Mr. Joule, 
of Manchester, showed that 772 pounds falling 
through one foot produces sufficient heat to raise 
one pound of water 1° F.; and they speak of the 
mechanical equivalent of heat as being 772 foot 
pounds. Now some have insinuated, and some have 
asserted, that mind is merely one of the correlated 
physical forces. But prema facze there is one 
grand difficulty in the way of establishing this doc- 
trine, in the fact that, even if it were true, we have 
no means of proving it,— certainly no such means as 
we have of proving that heat is one of the correlated 
forces. Scientific men can measure heat and the 
other physical forces — we can measure the degrees 
of heat produced by the fall of a pound so many feet ; 
but we cannot weigh or measure thought or feeling 
or will. This is a fact which shows at once the 
essential difference between the two, between body 
and mind. ‘The barometer has not yet been con- 
structed which will measure the weight of a thought, 
—say the thought of Sir Isaac Newton when he 
got the first glimpse of the law of gravitation. We 
have yet to find a thermometer which will measure 
the intensity of love on the part of a mother for 
her boy when he is being torn from her to go to a 
distant land, or expiring before her eyes; or the 
love of a Christian, —say the Apostle John — for 
his Saviour. | 

Mr. Herbert Spencer tells us,* “ That no idea or 
feeling arises, save as a result of some physical 


* First Principles, p. 217. 


212 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 


force expended in producing it, is fast becoming 
a common-place of science; and whoever only 
weighs the evidence will see, that nothing but an 
overwhelming bias in favor of a pre-conceived 
theory can explain its non-acceptance.” This is 
by no means a correct expression of the facts. Let 
us carcfully observe what actually takes place. A 
mother receives a letter intimating the death of a 
son. The paper with the black strokes on it is all 
that falls under the senses; but the mind at once 
apprehends the meaning, and the idea of the loss 
so affects the mother that, after violent outbursts 
of grief, she is left thoroughly exhausted. Now 
there is no evidence that all this anxious thought 
and sorrowful feeling is the “result of some phys- 
ical force expended.” What follows the simple per- 
ception by the senses is a mental operation, an idea 
of the loss of a beloved son arising according to 
psychical and not physical laws. This is seen 
more clearly when the affection is produced solely 
by internal contemplation, without any external 
occasion; as when on reflecting on our past con- 
duct we feel that we have done wrong, and expe- 
rience the qualms of conscience. True, these 
mental states exercise an influence on the brain, 
whereby brain force is expended and physical 
prostration is the result. But the grief of the 
mother, the condemnation of the conscience, is not 
the result of a physical force expended. The 
expenditure of the physical force laid up in the 
brain is rather the result of the strong mental 


PROFESSOR BARKER. pvt 


affection which has risen up according to the laws 
of mind. 

An American chemist has made an attempt to - 
prove that mental force is one of the correlated 
forces.* The facts on which he proceeds are said 
to be these: There are states of mental torpor in 
which the galvanic needle applied to the brain may 
remain stationary for hours. “But let a person 
knock on the door outside the room, or speak a sin- 
gle word, even though the experimenter remained 
absolutely passive, and the reception of the intelli- 
gence caused the needle to swing through twenty 
degrees.” Dr. Barker has not seen what is involved 
in this fact. The person was passive in respect of 
bodily action; but, upon the knock or the word 
reaching him, the mind was startled into action. 
Now here we have, first, a thought produced by the 
knock, or, rather, by the apprehension in the mind 
of the knock. + This thought was not the product 
of physical laws, but of mental laws,—an idea 
awakened by an intimation of the senses, coming 
suddenly and unexpectedly. ‘The idea, or thought, 
was not the conversion of a physical force; but 
the idea in the mind probably increased the circu- 
lation of the brain, and with this its animal heat, 
and hence the needle moved. Dr. Barker is en- 
tirely wrong in his interpretation of the fact, when 
he says, “The heat evolved during the reception 
of an idea is energy which has escaped conversion 


* “The Correlation of Vital and Physical Forces,” by Pro- 
fessor Geo. F. Barker, M.D., Yale College. 


214 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 


into thought.” In the actual process, there has been 
a thought in the mind, produced by mental laws, 
prior to the evolution of heat, which in fact follows’ 
in consequence of the action of thinking and emo- 
tion on the brain. Dr. Barker tells us, farther, 
that “experiments have shown that ideas which 
affect the emotions produce most heat in their re- 
ception ;” “a few minutes’ recitation to one’s self 
of emotional poetry producing more effect than sev- 
eral hours of deep thought.” This is what we 
might anticipate, according to mental laws, that 
emotional thoughts, such as poetical images, would 
excite the mind more than calm thoughts, and 
thereby use and expend more physical force. 
Surely Dr. Barker does not mean that the physical 
forces, that the heat of the brain, could distinguish 
between emotional poetry and deep thought? All 
this does not go to prove that poetical images, such 
as those of Shakspeare, are the conversion of phys- 
ical energy. The correct statement is, that the 
emotions produced by mental action use and waste 
the brain energy. Again, we are told that “Dr. 
Lombard’s experiments have shown that the amount 
of heat developed by the recitation to one’s self of 
emotional poetry was, in every case, less when that 
recitation was oral.” I can readily believe this; 
for when the recitation was oral, the force which 
would have affected the needle was used in con- 
nection with the muscular contraction necessary to 
articulation. ‘Thus, too, we can explain the well- 
known fact that, when emotion is allowed its natural 


MIND NOT A CORRELATED FORCE. 215 


outlét and expression in bodily action, it is moder- 
ated. Not that the emotion is converted into mus- 
cular energy, but that the physical energy in the 
brain becoming less, the emotion is restrained, and 
lassitude follows. I do not require, then, to dispute 
any of Dr. Barker’s statements as to facts. I sim- 
ply dispute his interpretation of the facts, especially 
his rash inference in the assertion that thoughts 
and emotions are merely the conversion of physical 
energy; of which there is not a particle of evi- 
dence. The change in the state of the brain does 
not produce the thought, — say the thought of duty 
or the thought of danger, — but follows it. The 
ideas — whether the being startled by a sound, or 
the calm meditation of a philosopher or mathemati- 
cian, or the emotional image of the poet, or the same 
thoughts recited alone or to others — all arise ac- 
cording to mental laws, which can be very definitely 
expressed ; and the liberated heat and electricity are 
the accompaniment of the action of thought upon 
the brain. , 

When physical force disappears in one form, we 
can find it in another. When it vanishes as heat, 
we may detect it in the mechanical power of the 
steam-engine. We know, too, where the power in 
plants and animals goes. When they die, it de- 
scends into the earth to increase the organic sub- 
stance in the soil. But, surely, in mind we must 
have, if it be a physical force, a higher concentra- 
tion of power than in any of these. But where has 
mind-force gone on the dissolution of the body ? 


210 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 


Can the man of science detect it in air or earth ? 
Can he weigh it or turn it to any use, as he can 
turn mechanical power or decaying vegetable and 
animal matter? It is said that there is as much 
electricity in a rain-drop as might produce, when 
emitted, a thunder charge. How much larger 
must have been the force in the brain of Shak- 
speare! But, when Shakspeare died, was there 
any evidence of the conversion of that force into 
any correlated force, chemical, mechanical, or 
vital ? 

Altogether, the special operations of the mind, — 
the recognition of an event as past by the memory, 
the remembrance of a mother long since ascended 
into glory, the tracing of an effect through a long 
process to a remote cause, the discovery of a new 
planet by mathematical ratiocination before the 
telescope had alighted upon it, the brilliant fancies 
and wide imaginings of the poet, the fondness of a 
mother for her son, the refusal to tell a lie when 
strongly tempted, the resolution of the sailor to cast 
himself into the sea to preserve the life of a fellow- 
creature at the risk of his own, the abhorrence of 
sin on the part of a sanctified mind, the idea of God 
and of holiness, the constant aim to reach the purity 
of heaven,—these, considered simply as phenomena, 
belong to an entirely different order from heat, or 
mechanical power, or an electric current, or chem- 
ical affinity: we feel that there is an incongruity in 
the very proposal to weigh or measure them, and 
there is no proof that they can be converted into 


RELATION OF MIND AND BODY. 217 


a physical force, or that a physical force can be 
converted into them. 

The following is a hypothesis which seems to 
combine a number of the facts established by recent 
science. Mind does not seem to me to be connected 
‘with rude matter, with the molecules of matter; but 
with the forces in matter, with the correlated forces. 
There is need of a concurrence of force in the brain 
in order to mental action. ‘This is supplied by the 
alimentary and digestive organs, which may send it 
to the brain in the form of blood. They get it in 
the shape of food from vegetables or animals, which 
again get it, as every man of science knows, from 
_ the sun. The power which radiates from the sun 
enters the plant, which is eaten by the ox, which is 
eaten by us; and the organs of the body send it on 
to the brain, where it is laid up lke water in a 
reservoir. One main function of the brain, espe- 
cially of the gray matter, is to receive and distrib- 
ute it. The brain is provided for this purpose; is 
partly formed, I believe, by this very force accu- 
mulating there from day to day and year to year. 
Here, then, we have force of some kind, and a 
brain to hold it, to direct it, and enable the mind 
to use it. But all this is not thinking, is not know- 
ing or feeling or willing; in all this there is no 
discernment, no hope or fear or desire, or appre- 
ciation of the beautiful, or of good and evil. A 
current of nerve force running through the cortical 
cells of the brain is one thing, the thought of 
Mayer in arguing out the doctrine of the corre- 

10 


218 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 


lation of the physical forces is an entirely different 
thing. 

I am inclined to admit that God has so consti- 
tuted our present compound nature, that, without 
physical force distributed in the brain, the mind- 
will not work, —just as a water-mill will not work 
if it has no water. And when the mind works, it 
uses and changes this power, which takes a new 
form. It is not thereby either increased or dimin- 
ished: it merely gets a new distribution; runs down, 
in fact, to the lower parts of the frame, and goes 
out in dregs, and is no longer available to the mind, 
which will act healthily only so far as it has a sup- 
' ply of this physical force. When this force is ex- 
hausted, the mind feels helpless for the time — the 
mill stops. If, by a disturbance in the brain, the 
force is improperly directed, there may be that most 
melancholy of all sights, a derangement in the 
mental operations. On the needful force being sup- 
plied, the mind is ready to work, and in doing so 
obeys its own laws—the mill obeys the laws of its 
own machinery: the mind thinks according to logi- 
cal laws, feels according to the laws of feeling, ap- 
preciates beauty according to the laws of esthetics. 
If the force is supplied in proper measure, and in 
the proper channels, the mind acts freely and 
healthily. If not supplied in due order, the mind 
is arrested, disturbed, agitated, and its proper action 
interfered with ; and gloomy thoughts and perverted 
feelings may arise. But all this, while the physical 
force is one thing, and mental action is another 


MIND IS IMPERISHABLE. 219 


thing, —just as the mill machinery is one thing, 
and the water which it needs another thing. And 
though the one were to cease, it does not follow that 
the other must also cease. The water would flow 
on whether there be a mill or no. The mill might 
go by some other power, — say steam, — supplying 
the needful conditions. As man is at present consti- 
tuted, the mind needs the physical force and the 
brain-case to hold that force and direct it; but this 
does not show that in another state of things the 
mind might not without the body, — and on other 
conditions being supplied, — think and feel and act 
as it did before. When a blacksmith’s stroke is 
stayed by striking on the anvil, we know where the 
power has gone: it has gone into the molecular 
motion or heat of the body struck. When the body 
of the animal dies, we know where the power has 
gone: it has gone into the soil to enrich it. When 
Newton died, where did the intellectual force go? I 
know where: it went not down into the earth with the 
body, but up to God in heaven. When the Chris- 
tian dies, where has his love gone? Not into the 
grave for worms to feed on it, but up to the bosom 
of the Saviour from which it has flowed. Yes: it is 
a universal law of nature and of grace that nothing 
dies, though every thing changes. “The dust shall 
return to the earth as it was, and the spirit shal] 
return unto God who gave it.” 


VALE 


OuR Lorp’s LIFE A REALITY AND NOT A ROMANCE. — 
CRITICISM OF RENAN’S LIFE OF JESUS. 


4 EE points which I have been discussing in the 

previous lectures have a bearing both upon 
Natural and Revealed Religion. If we cannot 
know any thing except what passes under our sen- 
tient experience, we have no evidence of those 
great verities to which faith looks; and if the soul 
of man be material, it is not easy to see how we 
can rise to the conception of an immaterial God, or 
be justified in holding by the immortality of the soul. 
And it is to be borne in mind, that the Scriptures 
do not set about proving that there is a God: they 
assume that he exists, and claim to be a revelation 
of his will. ‘There have been persons who sought 
to undermine our belief in natural religion, in order 
to shut us up into revealed religion, —a very peril- 
ous undertaking, inasmuch as in pulling down the 
platform on which their opponents are placed, they 
pull down that on which they themselves stand. I 
can join heartily with all those who would establish 
in a logical manner the great truths of Natural 


Theology; and I confidently expect help at this 


REVEALED RELIGION. 221 


point from the best Unitarians and Rationalists of 
America. It must now be clear to them that. if 
these foundations are destroyed by the rising Posi- 
tive or Materialist schools, they have no religion 
left: and I am cherishing the hope that they will 
employ the literary and philosophical abilities which 
God has given them, in defending the great truths 
of the existence of God, the immortality of the soul, 
and the indelible distinction between good and evil; 
and in doing so, my hope is that they may be led 
into a higher religious position than that which they 
at present occupy. Standing on these fundamental 
truths, they will feel that what they know impels 
them to desire to know more. For the question will 
press itself upon them, How do I stand in relation 
to that God in whose existence I believe? to that 
holy God who hates sin? to that God to whom I 
must give an account? ‘That law in the heart con- 
demns the possessor of it: how am I to be recon- 
ciled to the Lawgiverr These questions carry us 
beyond natural to revealed religion. 

With a special object before me in these Lec- 
tures, —that is, to meet the wants of the times, —I 
am not to enter on the whole wide subject of the 
Evidences of Christianity. It is now felt on all hands 
that the question turns round the Life, the Charac- 
ter, and the Works of Jesus. This is the strong- 
hold which has often been assailed and never been 
taken. -With it secured, we can defend the whole 
territory, — Old Testament and New Testament, doc- 
trine, history, and morality. An ingenious attempt 


222 APOLOGETICS. 


has been made in our day to seize this citadel ; 
and this I seek to meet. 

There are two, and only two, ways in which an 
attack can be made on the reality of our Lord’s life. 
It may be urged, first, that the gospel history is a 
fable, in which it is vain to seek for any truth; or 
that it is such a mixture of fact and fable, that it 
is impossible to distinguish the one from the other. 
It is after this manner that Grote proceeds in deal- 
ing with the siege of Troy. He says, we have 
no account of the siege except in books of poetry, 
which do not profess to be history, and which were 
composed ages after the alleged occurrence; and 
so we cannot be quite sure that there ever was such 
an event: or, on the supposition that there may have 
been a basis of fact, we cannot separate the actual 
from the traditional and legendary. There have 
been assailants who took this ground in seeking to 
undermine our confidence in the gospel history. It 
is now acknowledged that the attempt was a com- 
plete and a miserable failure. Our Lord lived not 
in fabulous, but in historical, times, in which Grecian 
culture and literature were widely diffused, and in 
which the Roman government had introduced set- 
tled law and means of communication. And these 
four Gospels are, on the very face of them, not 
poems or legends or myths, but historical narra- 
tives, professedly by eye-witnesses, or persons who 
received their information from eye-witnesses. In 
their structure and spirit they are simple and art- 
less, life-like and truth-like. Satisfactory evidence 


M. RENAN’S ADMISSIONS. 223 


can be produced that they existed very much as we 
now have them in the age immediately succeeding 
the crucifixion of Jesus, — three of them in less than 
forty, and the other in about sixty, years from that 
event. If we maintain that the life of our Lord is 
not an historical event, we are landed in hopeless 
difficulties : in consistency, we shall have to give up 
all ancient history, deny that there ever was such a 
person as Alexander of Macedon, or that there was 
such an event as the assassination of Julius Cesar. 
M. Renan has seen this, and has followed another 
method. He allows that the four Gospels are in 
substance historical books, and that Jesus spoke 
and acted very much as he is represented as doing 
in these narratives; but then he claims to take so 
much, and rejects the rest. He has thus avoided 
some of the difficulties in which infidels have in- 
volved themselves, but ,he is caught in others quite 
as formidable. He has drawn out from these four 
Gospels a superficially connected and plausible biog- 
raphy which he chooses to call a fifth Gospel; but 
in doing so he has violated all the laws of historical 
investigation, proceeded on caprice and prejudice, 
drawn a character inconsistent with itself, and given 
us a history utterly incongruous and incredible. 

It is one of the disadvantages under which we 
labor in contending with the sceptic, that he objects 
to every weapon which we may bring with us. It 
is fortunately possible in the argument with this 
critic of our Lord’s life, that we can fight him with 
his own weapons. M. Renan receives a large por- 


224 APOLOGETICS. 


tion of the gospel history, but he will not accept 
the whole. Now I meet him by showing that he 
is acting capriciously in taking so large a part and 
rejecting the remainder, and that the same histori- 
cal reasons which lead him to adopt so much should 
in consistency constrain him to go farther and hold 
by the rest. Suppose some one were to affirm that- 
Shakspeare had written all those plays which deal 
with war and stirring incident, but that he could 
not have conceived or depicted the reflective and 
moralizing Hamlet; or to maintain that while Milton 
had composed the dignified and magnificent “ Para- 
dise Lost” he had not written the livelier “ Comus,” 
or the duller “Paradise Regained,” which, it is 
alleged, must have been produced by an imitator of 
inferior genius: how would you meet such a pre- 
posterous hypothesis? You would prove that we 
have as good historical proof of the one work, as of 
the other, proceeding from the authors whose names 
they bear; and you might show, farther, that the 
works themselves bear traces in style and manner, 
in thought and sentiment, of proceeding from the 
same writers. It is in this way that I am to pro- 
ceed in reviewing the French critic. J am to show 
that when he has gone so far, he cannot in consist- 
ency stop where he does, but must advance con- 
siderably farther. 

I am to assume nothing which he does not allow 
in his candor or in his ingenuity. What, then, does 
he admit? He allows that Matthew wrote a Gospel ; 
that Matthew was an eye-witness and an ear-witness 


MATTHEW AND MARK'’S GOSPELS. 225 


of what he records, or had very direct means of 
knowing the truth of it. He concedes all this on 
the internal credibility of the narrative, and on the 
authority of Papias, who wrote early in the second 
century, and of a chain of succeeding writers, who 
quote or refer to the Gospel. He is specially fond 
of insisting that Matthew preserved the Discourses 
of our Lord, — “ he deserves, evidently, a confidence 
without limit for the discourses; ”* and, in particu- 
lar, he grants that the parables, as being one narra- 
tive, could not be altered, and that we have them as 
our Lord delivered them. He allows farther that 
there was a Gospel by Mark; that Mark was a dis- 
ciple and an eye-witness, and to be trusted as to the 
facts which he relates; that he was a relative of 
Peter, who may be supposed to have given his sanc- 
tion to Mark’s Gospel; and that Peter was originally 
an illiterate fisherman, and the impulsive, impetuous, 
open, and honest man which he is described as being 
in the Gospels. He admits that Matthew and Mark 
were not men of genius or invention; that neither 
was capable of writing the discourses put into the 
mouth of our Lord, of imagining the wonders which 
he is represented as performing, or of conceiving 
the finer and loftier features of his character. He 
grants farther that these two Gospels must have been 
written about the time of the siege of Jerusalem; 
that is, between thirty and forty years after our 
Lord’s crucifixion. 

So far all seems satisfactory to the Christian. 


* Introd. p. xxxvii (in 13th ed. p. Ixxxi.). 
Loe 


220 APCLOGETICS. 


But, to enable our critic to dispense with any pas- 
sages that displease him, he alleges that the two 
Gospels underwent a change. He thinks that when 
a person happened to have either of the Gospels, in 
order to have a complete text, he would write on 
the margin passages from the other Gospel. It was 
in this way, he supposes, that the two Gospels were 
fashioned into the shape in which we now have 
them. The theory may seem an ingenious one; but 
it is a crazy fabric, which, as it tumbles down, only 
injures the man who built it. For, by such a proc- 
ess, we should have had, not two Gospels, but a 
hundred or a thousand. ‘The disciple at Jerusalem 
with a copy of Matthew would make additions in 
one way; and the Christian at Antioch with a copy 
of Mark would supplement in a different way ; 
while readers at Alexandria, at Ephesus, at Corinth, 
and at Rome would amend in still different ways: 
and thus we should have had innumerable variations 
and discrepancies ever multiplying and becoming 
more exaggerated; whereas, as is admitted by all, 
we have, from a very old date, certainly from the 
beginning of the second century —I believe earlier 
— these two Gospels in their present form, and soon 
after we have them fixed for ever, by their being 
translated into other tongues. 

M. Renan does not look with so favorable an eye 
on Luke’s Gospel. He evidently does not like the 
account given in the first two chapters of our Lord’s 
supernatural descent. But he makes important ad- 
missions as to this Gospel. It is allowed that it was 


LUKE'S GOSPEL. 2207 


written by Luke, and that Luke also wrote the Book 
of Acts; that Luke was a disciple of our Lord, and 
had means of knowing about his sayings and acts; 
that, as he claims, he “had perfect understanding 
of all things from the first,” and got information 
“from them that were eye-witnesses and ministers 
of the Word;” that he was the companion of Paul, 
and must have had the countenance of that Apostle 
to his Gospel. He will not allow that Luke pub- 
lished his Gospel before the destruction of Jerusalem ; 
for this would imply that our Lord gave a most 
minute prediction of that event (chap. xxi.) : but he 
is sure it must have been given to the world soon 
after ; that is, within forty years of our Lord’s death. 
He qualifies all this by alleging that Luke admitted 
legends and adopted traditions. Here again our 
critic involves himself in perplexities from which 
there is no honest outlet. For in these forty years 
there was not time for the gathering of traditions or 
the formation of myths. We have unfounded tradi- 
tions and legends of occurrences which happened 
centuries ago, but not of the lives of John Quincy 
Adams, Henry Clay, and General Jackson. At 
the time when Luke wrote, a large body of eye- 
witnesses and of actors in the scenes, Galilean and 
Jewish, such as apostles, disciples, priests, scribes, 
and rulers, — friendly and unfriendly, — must have 
been alive, and many of them ready to expose any 
erroneous statement put forth by the friend of so 
well known an apostle as Paul. If it be alleged that 
additions may have been made by others to this 


228 APOLOGETICS. 


Gospel, we are involved in the same difficulties as 
we have shown Renan is in regard to the first two 
Gospels; that is, instead of one settled Gospel, we 
should have a hundred Gospels according to Luke, 
each differing from the others according to the kind 
of legends adopted. 

M. Renan does not know very well what to make 
of John’s Gospel. He is sure it must have been the 
same person who wrote the Gospel and the three 
epistles that bear the name of John: the style is 
sufficient to prove this. He reckons it quite estab- 
lished by historical evidence that this Gospel was 
published before the end of the century; that is, 
less than seventy years after our Lord’s ascen- 
sion. He is certain that the author must have been 
John, or an immediate disciple of John, and thinks 
it highly probable that it must have been written by 
John: in fact, he thinks, we may consider John as 
the author. He allows that John was an apostle 
very intimate with our Lord, and constantly with 
him, and that he wrote later than the other evan- 
gelists, and with the view of furnishing a connected 
chronological account of our Lord’s life, and of 
reporting discourses and detailing incidents which 
had not appeared in the other Gospels. He con- 
cedes that this John was originally an illiterate 
fisherman, son of Zebedee the fisherman, on the 
lake of Galilee; and that he could-not have con- 
ceived or written- certain of the discourses in the 
Gospel, such as that sublime prayer which Jesus is 
represented (chap. xvii.) as putting up in behalf 


~ 


GOHN’S GOSPEL. 229 


of his disciples. But to counteract these conces- 
sions, he would have it that parts of chap. xxi. are 
an addition made by one who was nearly a contem- 
porary. He insinuates that good faith was not always 
John’s rule in writing his Gospel.* But observe 
into what a mess of difficulties our author has 
plunged himself by these admissions and denials. 
Chap. xxi. has all the peculiarities of style which 
have convinced Renan that the other parts of the 
Gospel and the Epistles are by the same writer. 
That writer opens his First Epistle: “That which 
was from the beginning, which we have heard, 
which we have seen with our eyes, which we have 
looked upon and our hands have handled of the 
Word of Life; for the Life was manifested, and we 
have seen it and bear witness.” M. Renan is evi- 
dently right when he finds the same author saying 
in the same style (John xix. 35), “And he that saw 
it bare record, and his record is true, and he know- 
eth that he saith true that ye might believe.” But 
surely it must be the same who says in the rejected 
chapter xxi. 24, “This is_the disciple which tes- 
tifieth of these things, and wrote these things, and 
we know that his testimony is true.” I believe the 
testimony thus solemnly given. To refuse this is 
to make a liar and a hypocrite of the beloved dis- 
ciple of our Lord, the apostle who has recorded the 
inost heavenly and loving of his discourses, and 
who, according to history, lived.a long and consist- 
ent life, bearing persecution and exile, because of 


* Page 15Q. 


230 APOLOGETICS. 


his belief in what he has attested, and ever with the 
words of purity and truth upon his lips. 

Such was the view taken of Jolin’s Gospel in the 
first twelve editions of his work. In the thirteenth 
he modifies his previous opinions. He is now 
inclined to think that the Apostle John is not the 
author of the fourth Gospel. But he argues still 
that it has a real connection with the Apostle John, 
and that it was written towards the end of the first 
century. He insists that this Gospel possesses at 
bottom a value parallel to that of the Synoptics, 
and in fact superior to them at times.* But by 
these changes he has not improved his position: 
He acknowledges that the author of the fourth 
Gospel wishes to pass for the Apostle John.t He 
farther allows that it contains some _ references 
(vensergnments) infinitely superior to those of the 
Synoptics.t He appreciates the beauty and pro- 
priety of the discourses of our Lord closing with 
the sublime prayer, recorded from chap. xiii.— 
XVil.; and insists that there must be truth in these 
circumstantial and characteristic narratives of the 
transactions towards the close of our Lord’s life. 
What then are we to make of these ? Were the 
discourses and the prayer uttered by Jesus ? Then 
they carry with them the whole incidents of which 
they formed a part, and out of which they arose. 


* Pref. de la Treiz. Ed., p. xii. In Lecture IX. will be found 
some remarks on the apparent discrepancies between John and 
the Synoptics; and in Lecture X. on John’s Gospel. 

{ Isitrod., p. lxv. 1 App., p- 514. 


YOHN’S GOSPEL. pi 


Renan acknowledges that the parables in the 
Synoptics could not have been composed by the 
disciples who scarcely understood them, who were 
not capable of inventing them, and could not have 
altered them without entirely destroying their unity. 
And it will at once be admitted that they were quite 
as incapable of fashioning the discourses and the 
prayer of our Lord on the night he was betrayed. 
Nor can it be reasonably maintained that, with a 
basis of fact, they may have had additions made to 
them by legendary traditions, for in that case they 
would have lost all consistency. And so M. Renan 
alleges that the fourth Gospel was written by some 
member of the schools of Asia which attached them 
selves to John. But to this I reply, first, that no 
mystic of Asia Minor, or of any other country, ever 
produced any thing worthy of being compared with 
these chapters. And, secondly, this is to suppose 
that there were two persons in that century, one 
of whom could deliver the Sermon on the Mount, 
and the other the addresses and the petition for the 
church — so radiant with heavenly light — recorded 
in the close of John’s Gospel. It is to suppose, 
farther, that these breathings of the heart were 
composed by one guilty all the while of the deceit 
implied in wishing to pass himself off as the Apostle 
John. M. Renan evidently felt himself in diffi- 
culties in his old position, but in shifting his ground 
he has only got into new perplexities. 

It is out of these four Gospels that the critic com- 
poses what he calls a Fifth Gospel. I have occu- 


22¢ APOLOGETICS. 


pied myself many laborious hours in ascertaining 
how much of the four Gospels 1s acknowledged in 
the fifth. I have marked by pencil in a copy of the 
New ‘Testament the passages employed in the con- 
struction of the “Life of Jesus,” and which are 
sanctioned by quotation or by reference at the foot 
of the page, and have thus made out the Gospel 
history acknowledged by this unbeliever. The 
portion of my Testament occupied by the Gospels 
is quite black with the strokes I have drawn. 
There is not a single chapter of the four evan- 
gelists in which we have not more or less acknowl- 
edged. The author has accepted whole chapters 
as written by Matthew or Mark or Luke or John, 
and as containing the real discourses of Jesus, or 
narrating the deeds performed by him. I find that 
there are about 971 verses in Matthew’s Gospel, 
and Renan refers to no fewer than 791 of these as 
giving an accurate account of the sayings or doings 
of our Lord; and he quotes other 73 as being in 
the Gospel by Matthew, but not allowed by him to 
state the facts correctly. In Mark’s Gospel there 
are about 678 verses; and our author uses 384 to 
draw up his own account of our Lord’s life; and 
ascribes other 82 to Mark, who, however, in these 
does not please the critic. Of the I15I verses in 
Luke, 606 are employed for his own history by 
Renan, and 136 more are attributed to Luke with- 
out the statements being sanctioned. I have not 
summed up John’s Gospel so carefully because 
he speaks so indecisively about it; but a like 


ADMISSIONS AS TO OUR LORDS LIFE. 233 


calculation would give us very much the same 
result. 

And here itis of the utmost moment to have it 
settled what the critic admits to be true in our 
Lord’s life. He allows that Jesus was the son 
of Mary, who was married to Joseph the carpenter ; 
that he had brothers and sisters, and was the oldest 
of the family; that he was brought up at Nazareth ; 
that he went up to Jerusalem at the age of twelve 
and conversed with the doctors; that he could read, 
but did not know any foreign literature; that he 
preached at Nazareth, and was in danger of being 
thrown over the brow of a hill (which M. Renan 
can point out), and was driven out of Nazareth; 
that he had transactions in Cana of Galilee, and 
went to Capernaum on the lake; that he was 
much in the houses of Zebedee and Peter; that he 
gathered round him a body of disciples, and that 
the twelve named in the Gospels were his apostles ; 
that he visited in his labors of love the cities and 
villages lying round the north-west of the lake; 
that he was believed to cure diseases and work 
miracles, and allowed the people to think that he 
did so; that he delivered discourses from a ship on 
the lake and from a mountain in the neighborhood ; 
that these discourses, and especially his Sermon on 
the Mount and his parables, have been handed 
down to us as he delivered them; that he wasa 
relative of John the Baptist, and had intercourse 
with him, and was much influenced by him, 
receiving messages from him and sending messages 


234. APOLOGETICS. 


to him, and that John was a genuine though a 
stern man; that he took occasional excursions into 
other regions, such as the coasts of Tyre and 
Sidon, and to Cesarea Philippi and the Perea, 
and Jericho and Ephraim; and that he went up 
regularly to Jerusalem at the religious feasts, and 
there delivered discourses and purified the Temple, 
and was supposed to do wonderful works, — all this 
as detailed in the four Gospels. In particular 
Renan gives a full account of our Lord’s last visit 
to Jerusalem and of his death. He tells us that 
Jesus was intimate with Martha and Mary and the 
family at Bethany, that he often spent the night 
there, that he brought Lazarus out of the tomb 
there, and that ointment was poured on his body 
there in anticipation of his burial; that he went 
into Jerusalem during the day, and M. Renan can 
point out his favorite resorts and places of prome- 
nade; that at the passover he ate the last supper 
with his disciples; that the priests and rulers 
plotted against him, and that Judas betrayed him ; 
that he often went into the garden of Gethsemane, 
and that the officers seized him there; that he 
was brought before Caiaphas the high priest, and 
Annas, who (it is acknowledged by Renan in 

striking consonance with the Gospel narrative) | 
ruled the high priest; that his trial, as reported by 
the evangelists, is in remarkable accordance both 
with the Roman law and with the Jewish customs 
as given in the Jewish Talmud; that the disciples 
fled, that Peter stood afar off and denied him, and 


ADMISSIONS AS TO OUR LORD'S LIFE. 235 


that John and the women went to the foot of the 
cross; that Pilate was unwilling to condemn him 
and proposed to let him go, but yielded to the 
clamors of the Jews, who insisted that Barabbas 
should be released instead; that he was scourged 
and buffeted, and led to crucifixion through the 
streets of Jerusalem; that, being exhausted, they 
laid his cross on a young man from the country ; 
that he was crucified between two thieves, and that, 
after being some hours upon the cross, there was a 
bursting of a vessel of the heart; that his side was 
pierced, and that a fluid substance came out of it; 
that Joseph of Arimathea begged the body, and 
was joined by Nicodemus in preparing it for the 
sepulture; that Pilate, after exacting precautions 
from the centurion, allowed this; that he was buried 
in the tomb, and a great stone rolled upon it, and a 
guard set to watch it. Here Renan closed his Life, 
and promised to take up the resurrection in a future 
volume. Itisa suitable close. The Fifth Gospel 
gives us a death, but gives no resurrection. In 
the Christian Church, as at the creation of the 
world, the evening and the morning constitute the 
day: in this new religion, which is to supersede 
the Christian, the night cometh, but there is no 
morning. 

We do wonder, when all this is allowed, that the 
other parts of the gospel narrative should be denied. 
But Renan cannot admit that our Lord possessed 
supernatural power; and so he is obliged to devise > 
a theory to account for our Lord’s character, influ- 


230 APOLOGETICS. 


ence, and alleged wonderful deeds, without allowing 
him to be a divine messenger or teacher. He finds 
three periods in our Lord’s life. In the jrs¢ period, 
he sets out as a moralist and gentle reformer: he 
begins to preach and gather round him a company 
of disciples, and to travel from village to village in 
Galilee. In the second period, he comes into closer 
communion with the stern and gloomy Baptist: he © 
imagines himself, or allows himself to be thought, 
the son of David and the Messiah of the prophets ; 
and seeks to establish a kingdom of a romantic or 
ideal character, in which civil government and 
private property were to cease, and in which the 
rich were to be degraded and the poor exalted. 
Failing in this, there comes a ¢hzrd period, in which 
he becomes disappointed and embittered; nay, is 
tempted to use artifice, and is hurried on to death in 
a troubled manner and spirit, expecting some unde- 
fined world-revolution to come. ‘This is the new 
theory of the life of Jesus, stript of some of the 
paint with which the artist has daubed it. It is one 
of the most baseless historical theories ever formed 
by perverted ingenuity. In order to confute it, I 
am to use no other materials than those which 
the author of it has sanctioned. The passages 
which I quote (except when notice is given) are 
all employed by the critic in constructing his theory, 
and may therefore be legitimately employed in over- 
turning it. 

First Periop. At this stage Jesus is placed 
before us in what is meant to be a very engaging 


FIRST PERIOD. 237 


light. There never was so lovely a person as he. 
Of a ravishing form, of a genial and loving spirit, 
he drew towards him the hearts of all the men, but 
especially of all the women, with whom he came 
in contact. Somehow —our author cannot tell us 
_ how—the youth had risen to a high morality, far 
above that of degraded Galilee or bigoted Judza. 
He had come to feel that God was his Father, and 
the Father of all mankind. This was all his the 
ology; he knew no more: but this idea penetrated 
and filled his soul. With no sense of individuality, 
he could not distinguish himself from God. Ina 
happy hour, — so our author expresses it, — he be- 
gins to be a reformer and the preacher of a new 
morality. Drawn by his charming person, and the 
evidences of his love, a number of men and women 
‘gather round him. Putting himself at their head, 
he rides about the country. “He thus traverses 
Galilee in the midst of a perpetual féte. He rode 
upon a mule, an animal in the East well adapted 
for riding, sure-footed, and with a dark eye 
shadowed with long lashes and full of mildness. 
His disciples sometimes gave vent to their en- 
thusiasm by attempting a sort of rustic triumph. 
Their garments took the place of drapery: they 
cast them upon the mule that bore him; they 
spread them upon the ground where he had to 
tread. Wherever he dismounted, his arrival was 
held to be a joy and a blessing to that house. He 
stayed chiefly in the villages and at the large farms, 
where he met with an eager welcome”!! The 


238 MPOULOGELIIUS: 


picture is a very pretty one, and resembles the pil- 
grimages which I have seen in Austria of men 
and women to favorite shrines. Our author at this 
place gives a very enchanting picture of the scenery 
of Galilee, of its lake and mountains, its trees and 
shrubs, its grass and lilies, which he supposes the 
carpenter’s son and his attendant fishermen to ad- 
mire, in much the same way as the boy poets 
of this century, who have caught the spirit of 
Rousseau, Scott, and Chateaubriand, rave about 
natural scenery. Full of ideal dreams and pastoral 
visions, our Lord is represented as delivering his 
Sermon on the Mount, acknowledged to be perfect, 
and also the most beautiful and instructive of his 
parables. 

This is Renan’s picture of the First Period. As 
to some points in this description, it is clear that 
they are pure romance. It is instructive to find 
that no evangelist, no early Christian, says a word 
about the beauty of Christ’s person. I rather think 
that Renan here draws from the Roman Catholic 
painters. As to his riding on a mule, we read of 
his once riding into Jerusalem on an ass, as a sym- 
bol of his being a king, but a lowly king; but at 
all other times he walked it on weary foot over 
burning plain and rugged mountain. As to his 
admiration of natural scenery, it is obvious that he 
did love and appreciate his Father’s workmanship, 
that grass and these lilies, and the fowls of the 
air, but it was with a far loftier feeling than the 
Frenchman gives him credit for; and there is really 


OUR LORD'S MORALITY. 239 


no reason to believe that Peter and Andrew, Philip 
and Thomas, did ever break forth into ecstasies 
about flowers, like boarding-school girls of the 
nineteenth century, or were any thing more than 
plain, earnest fishermen, striving to earn an honest 
livelihood on their lake, and seeking withal to 
know what is true about God and right in duty. 
And then that sermon, acknowledged to be so per- 
fect that none but Jesus could have uttered it, how 
did it come that a Galilean peasant could utter it? 
Whence that morality, pure, it is acknowledged, be- 
yond all displayed to us before or since? I believe 
that he who expounded it must have been taught of 
God. 

That morality is not only pure and ethereal, as 
Renan allows: it is profound, penetrating, and soul- 
searching, in a way which our smart critic cannot 
estimate. It is certainly very different from the 
light, airy sentiment which is painted and recom- 
mended in our modern romances, French and Brit- 
ish. It is different in its whole spirit from the 
narrow, self-righteous ceremonial of the Pharisees, 
who busied themselves with laying down regu- 
lations as to the tithing of mint, anise, and cum- 
min, and as to the washing of pots and vessels. It 
is equally removed by its spirit of love and self- 
sacrifice above that of the proud old pagan philos- 
ophers of Greece or Rome, or that of the modern, 
self-sufficient rationalist. _It presupposes that man 
is a sinner; it sets before him a high ideal of purity 
and love, and points out a way of reaching it by 


240 : APOLOGETICS. 


grace; and it recommends the graces of faith in 
God, repentance, humility, and charity. 

It can be farther shown, that, while he was from 
the beginning a moralist, he was from the first more 
than a moralist. It was not in the progress of 
events that the idea occurred to him of setting up a 
kingdom: he intended all along to do so. It was 
not as he met with keen opposition at Jerusalem 
that he contemplated persecution: he foresaw it _ 
from the commencement of his public ministry. 
All this can be established by passages sanctioned 
by Renan as belonging to the earliest part of our 
Lord’s ministry. 

In proving this, I will not insist on the intimation 
of Jesus, contemplating a great work, at the age of 
twelve, “I must be about my Father’s business” 
(Luke ii. 49); for the critic, while he quotes the 
passage, is not sure about our Lord’s younger years. 
Neither will I dwell on his being consecrated to his 
work by baptism, as our author is not very willing to 
give his adhesion to all that is said about John bap- 
tizing Jesus; for he sees it implies the supernatural, 
— the heavens opened, the dove descending, and the 
Father approving. But I ask, What meaneth the 
temptation which preceded our Lord’s preaching and 
ministry? Recorded by the first three evangelists ; 
reported by Mark, who is said to be so accurate as 
to facts, — Renan acknowledges that there must be 
reality in it. And mark that it comes in, not at the 
close of his ministry, when his spirit was supposed 
to be chafed by opposition; but at the commence- 


OUR LORD'S EARLY PREACHING. — 241 


ment, showing that there was already a cloud over 
his spirit, and denoting that thunders would speedily 
burst. Then, let us listen to our Lord’s first sermon. 
It is not of that light, romantic character which we 
might expect from Renan’s theory. The subject of 
it is given, Mat. iv. 17, “Repent: for the kingdom 
of heaven is at hand,” in which two great truths are 
brought out: one, that there was a kingdom at hand ; 
and the other, that men were to enter it by repent- 
pce Mee account is,iullervin® Mark “1.14; 15: 
“Jesus came into Galilee preaching the gospel of 
the kingdom of God, and saying the time is fulfilled, 
and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent ye and 
believe the gospel ;” where it should be marked that 
our Lord connects the kingdom he was to set up with 
the predictions of the prophets, the fulfilment of 
which is said to be at hand; that the coming king 
dom is twice mentioned; that the gospel is said to 
be about that kingdom; and that repentance is the 
proper preparation for it. 

Let us turn now to the Sermon on the Mount so 
much lauded. ‘The first beatitude is one suited to 
sinners (Mat. v. 3): “Blessed are the poor in spirit.” 
The second implies that men are sinners, v. 4: 
“Blessed are they that mourn.” ‘There is a distinct 
apprehension of persecution coming, and an admoni- 
MGuetoeprepare for it, v. 11, 12: “Blessed are ye; 
when men shall revile you and persecute you, and 
shall say all manner of evil against you falsely. 
Rejoice, and be exceeding glad; for great is your 
reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the proph- 

It 


242 APOLOGETICS. 


> 


ets that were before you.” A kingdom is everywhere 
kept before our view, and the disciples were taught 
to pray, “Thy kingdom come.” ‘Those who use the 
Lord’s prayer are assumed to be sinners, to be weak 
and liable to temptation, and exposed to the assaults 
of the Evil One, vi. 12: “And forgive us our debts, 
as we forgive our debtors ; and lead us not into temp- 
tation, but deliver us from the Evil One.” The diffi- 
culties of the Christian course are clearly announced, 
vil. 14: “Strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, 
which leadeth to life, and few there be that find it.” 
I quote these utterances (and others to the same 
effect might be added), because it is acknowledged 
that they were delivered in the First Period, when 
it is supposed that he was so light and hopeful, and 
his whole prospect gladdened with sunshine. It 
should be frankly admitted that Jesus developed his 
plans gradually, as they had been ordained in the 
counsels of heaven, and according as men were able 
to bear them. But he had in him all along what he 
afterwards became, just as the tree is in the seed, 
as the oak is in the acorn. His course was one 
from first to last, along one road to one goal; begin- 
ning with his baptism and temptation, and ending 
with his crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension. 
SEconD Periop. In this period, Jesus comes into 
closer connection with John, is seized with a revolu- 
tionary ardor, and purposes to set up a kingdom. 
Though not descended from David, he allows it to 
be thought that he is. He never goes so far as to 
make himself equal with God; but he identifies him- 


SECOND PERIOD. 243 


self with God, and reckons himself the Messiah. 
The kingdom which he contemplates is not to be a 
political one established by a rebellion against the - 
Roman government. It is an ideal, that is a vision- 
ary, one, with no magistrate and no private property, 
and is to appear immediateiy. In order to bring it 
in, he ordains apostles and sends them out to preach 
and proclaim the new reign. Meanwhile he allows 
his ardent followers and the superstitious multitude 
to imagine that he heals diseases by a miraculous 
power, which he does not possess. Such was his 
aim -and his work during the middle portion of his 
ministry, in which, according to our author, we have 
his enthusiasm kindled into a nobler flame, and his 
contemplated end enlarged; but in which also we 
have the commencement of deflections from the pure 
morality of his early career, and of that accommo- 
dation to circumstances which led to positive artifice 
in the Third Period. If Jesus had died before this 
stage of his existence, he would not have been heard 
of beyond a small district of Galilee or after his 
own age; but he would have been purer and more 
faultless. 

It is easy, from the materials which the critic 
allows, to scatter this vision. We have seen that 
from the very first our Lord meant to set up a king- 
dom. As his public ministry advances, the plan 
is developed more fully ; but it is, in the end, merely 
the filling in of what had been described in outline 
from the beginning. The kingdom is obviously a 
spiritual one. But there was never a purpose to set 


244 APOLOGETICS. 


aside the temporal power. He refused to interfere 
in matters of civil government, saying, when he was 
called to decide in a legal dispute (Luke xii. 14), 
“Who made me a judge or a divider over your” 
He wrought a miracle, in order to pay tribute, and 
laid down the important principle (Mat. xxi. 21), 
“Render unto Cesar the things which are Cesar’s, 
and unto God the things that are God’s.” Here we 
have a clear and admirable enunciation of his doc- 
trine, both as to the kingdoms of this world and his 
own kingdom, subsisting together and alongside, 
each having a place and a sphere: namely, that in 
temporal things tribute, honor, and obeisance are to 
be rendered to Cesar, the civil governor; while in 
spiritual things the heart, conscience, and worship 
are to be reserved for God. Onr Lord clearly 
announces that his kingdom is to be a spiritual 
one. And here I will not insist on John ili. 3, 
where he says, we must be born again, in order to 
enter the kingdom; for Renan is not sure about this 
passage, though it is consonant with the whole teach- 
ing of our Lord. The critic acknowledges that 
Matthew may be implicitly trusted as to our Lord’s 
discourses. Let us turn, then, to Mat. xili., where 
we find a full account, by Jesus, of the nature of 
his kingdom. We see how the kingdom is to be 
established and men brought into it, v. 3, by the 
scattering of the seed of the Word; and we should 
observe how it is declared that a large body of man- 
kind are not prepared to receive that seed, because 
their hearts are impenetrable as the beaten wayside, 


OUR LORD'S KINGDOM. 245 


or thin as gravelly places, or choked up as with 
thorns. Again, this kingdom is to be the result of 
a long process and of growth, and is to be so far a 
mixed kingdom; for, v. 24, it is likened to a man 
sowing good seed, while the enemy sows tares, and 
both grow together till the harvest. In v. 47, it is 
represented as a net which gathers all kinds of 
fishes, which shows that our Lord saw that in the 
visible church the evil was to come in with the good, 
and that his views and expectations were never of 
that ideal, Utopian character which the Frenchman 
supposes them to have been. ‘The same lesson is 
taught by the comparison of the kingdom, v. 31, to 
a grain of mustard-seed and, v. 33, to leaven. For- 
tunately our author acknowledges the parables to be 
genuine: the disciples had not genius to fashion 
them, and they are too consistent to be made up of 
legends. The whole of Luke xv. is sanctioned by 
our sceptic, and we see from it who were to be 
members of Christ’s kingdom: v. 5, the lost sheep 
brought back on the shoulders of the shepherd; 
v. 8, the lost piece of money saved from the dust ; 
v. 11, the lost son brought back by the remembrance 
of a father’s love to the father’s house. The king- 
dom was to be a reign of God in men’s hearts (Luke 
xvii. 21): “Neither shall they say, lo here! or, lo 
there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within 
you.” The whole object of our Lord’s mission is 
described (Luke xix. 10.) : “The son of man is come 
to seek and save that which was lost.” Renan 
quotes twice Mat. xviii. 3, where the necessity of a 


240 APOLOGETICS. 


spiritual change is clearly pointed out: “Verily, I 
say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become 
as little children, ye shall not enter into the king- 
dom of heaven.” 

Tuirp Pertop. We approach the view given of 
this period with aversion: it so grates upon our feel- 
ings. We would shrink from the examination of it 
if we could; but there is no help for it: the charges 
have been brought, and we must face them. Jesus 
has been filled with an idea which makes him 
dizzy.** His idea he ‘finds’ is not to be, realized; 
and so bitterness and reproach affect his heart more 
and more every day,f and he gives way to feelings 
of disappointment and sourness, and in the end he 
hurries on to his death as a sacrifice which he cannot 
avoid. In order to set up his kingdom, he must 
leave Galilee and go up to Jerusalem. But there 
the scenery is so sterile and horridin Judea, when 
compared with the smiling northern province, that 
his spirits become oppressed! The Jewish doctors 
cannot appreciate his fine morality or his lorty 
visions, and the people are too indifferent to take 
any notice of him. He must do something to make 
himself known. What is this to be? He must 
either renounce his mission, or become a worker 
of miracles.t And here we have excuses offered 
for the conduct of Jesus which grate upon our 
moral sense, and to which we indignantly refuse to 
listen. Jesus has now touse less pure means: § he 
has to yield to opinion and satisfy the ideas of the 
time :|| at first the @rtzfzce (oh! we shrink from the 


* p. 318. f p.324. | p. 257. § p.g2- || pp- 160, 360. 


THIRD PERIOD. 24.7 


word as applied to Jesus) is innocent ;* he allows 
himself to be thought a worker of miracles against 
his will.t There lives on the back of the Mount 
of Olives, where it begins to slope from the sum- 
mit, a reputable and loving family, the members of 
which have become attached to Jesus. ‘They are 
anxious to further his views and promote his cause. 
We shrink from the thought of giving the account 
which follows, as we would from repeating a scan- 
dal against a brother or sister, a father or mother. 
But the calumny has been uttered, and we must 
repel it. Martha and Mary devise a plan of putting 
their brother Lazarus, while yet living, into the 
tomb, and Jesus consents to come tothe grave and 
call him forth. When we read this, we feel that we 
must reject with scorn all the compliments which 
Renan has been paying to our Lord throughout the 
volume, when. he lauds him as so great and pure, as 
“the individual who has approached nearest the 
Divine,” and as “the creator of the eternal religion 
of morality.” 

But let us pursue the development of the romance, 
which has now become so unnatural. The miracle 
does call the attention of many: butit only irritates 
the Jewish rulers, and they conspire to put Jesus to 
death. He has seen, for a considerable time, that 
he cannot establish his kingdom. He becomes bitter 
in his expressions and fierce in his denunciations. 
He feels that he must prepare for leaving this world. 
He might have avoided death; but love carries him 
on,{ and he makes the sacrifice, expecting some 


me Dar LOD fT p. 268. tp. 370: 


248 APOLOGETICS. 


speedy renovation of the world to be brought about 
he knows not how. 

Need I enter upon any elaborate statement to 
show how false the picture, if there be any consist- 
ency in character, any reality in the gospel narra- 
tives? It can be established, in the first place, that 
our Lord did not begin to work miracles at this 
time, that he habitually performed them from the 
commencement of his public ministry: we haveas 
good evidence of this as of any other incident in 
his history, as we have of his reputed miracle at 
Bethany. The same John tells us (chap. 11.) that 
he began his miracles three years before at Cana 
of Galilee; and Matthew gives detailed accounts of 
many miraculous cures, such as of the centurion’s 
servant (vill. 5-13), and of the man with the palsy 
(ix. 2-6). Mark, socommended for the accuracy of 
his narrative of facts, tells us (iii. 15) that when he 
ordained the Twelve, he gave them power to “heal 
sicknesses.” 

And as to Jesus being engaged in the alleged 
transaction at Bethany, our better nature sensitively 
recoils from it. He has here felt himself in diffi- 
culties. If he entirely omit the incident, his whole 
version of our Lord’s life loses its credibility; for 
we have an account of the transaction — minute, 
circumstantial, and consistent——by John, a pro- 
fessed spectator. And so our author gives the 
event; and, as he cannot admit it to be miraculous, 
he makes it a deception. But in making it an 
artifice, he has made it an inconsistency, an improb- 
ability; indeed, a moral impossibility. Renan’s 


LIHE RAISING OF LAZARUS. 249 


version of it is before us, and we have to examine 
it. If Jesus was what the author describes him, 
the purest, loftiest, and most truthful of men, he 
could not have done the deed. If he did the deed, 
he could not have had that lofty consciousness and 
those high moral aims which he is represented as 
setting continually before him. ‘This critic is here 
ina dilemma; and we leave him exposed, on the 
horn he may prefer, to the scorn of all truth- 
seeking historical investigators. The cunning 
artist has here outwitted himself, and has been 
led to do so by his false theory. He makes 
one, represented by him as entitled to be called 
“divine,” act as if he were a vulgar juggler or a 
wandering professor of mesmerism. If such an 
incongruity were exhibited on the stage, it would 
be hissed off it; as it is, we must hiss it off the 
stage of history. That one who, it is acknowl- 
edged, did such deeds of holiness, endured such 
self-sacrificing sufferings, and delivered such lofty 
-discourses, should have descended to so low a 
deception, is monstrous, is utterly incredible. I 
would as soon believe that there was not a single 
honorable merchant or trustworthy tradesman in 
our country, or a single honest man or virtuous 
woman_in our world; I would sooner believe that 
my father never cared for me, that my mother never 
loved me, as that one so truthful and sincere and 
loving should have done so hypocritical an act. 

So far I wrote at the time when the work was 
published.* I think it proper that what I then said 

* Good Words, 1864. 


250 ) APOLOGETICS. 


should appear in these Lectures, directed against 
the errors of our day. For the charge brought 
by M. Renan is allowed to remain in the editions 
issued at present in the book-stores of America, and 
in the English translation, even in the impressions 
bearing the date of 1870. But it requires to be 
stated that, after allowing the allegation to run 
through twelve editions, he withdrew it in the thir- 
teenth edition, published in 1867. He was driven 
from his first position by the remonstrances of schol- 
ars and the indignation of the public, who feel that 
his insinuations are unjust. For his first theory he 
has substituted a second, which is as weak as the 
other is unworthy. He still continues to insist that 
there were transactions in which Jesus consented to 
play a part; and, with pointed reference to the event 
at Bethany, that “there never was a great religious 
creation which did not imply a little of that which 
people call fraud.” * But he softens his language, 
and represents the supposed miracle as proceeding 
from a misunderstanding. ‘The friends of Jesus 
thought it needful that some wonder should be per- 
formed to impress the minds of the hostile inhabi- 
tants of Jerusalem. In particular, the pious sisters 
were sure that it would melt the hearts of the im- 
penitent, were one to rise from the dead. —* No,” 
said Jesus, “they will not believe, though one should 
rise from the dead.” ‘Then they recalled to him a 
history with which he was familiar, that of the poor 
good Lazarus covered over with sores, who died 
and was carried into Abraham’s bosom; but he as- 


* Treiz. Ed., App., p- 510. 


THE RAISING OF LAZARUS. 25. 


sured them that, “if Lazarus should return, they 
would not believe on him.” In time misunderstand- 
ings collected around this subject. “The hypothesis 
was changed into a fact.* They spoke of Lazarus 
as resuscitated, and of the unpardonable obstinacy 
which could resist such testimony.” It was impos- 
sible that a report of this should not reach Jerusalem, 
where it only exasperated the enmity of the rulers 
and brought disastrous consequences to Jesus. 
This is certainly a very slender basis on which to 
rear such a structure. M. Renan argues that there 
is need of some such foundation. He refuses to 
take refuge in the allegorical or mythical theory of 
Strauss and the rational theologians, which he is 
sure is not applicable to the characteristic incidents 
and accurate details, as to our Lord’s life, found in 
the account of his latter days in John’s gospel.f 
And I admit to him that popular legends may collect 
in nebulous matter round a very small nucleus. 
But not such a history and moral traits as are indis- 
solubly intertwined with the resurrection of Lazarus. 
In the earlier editions, he fixed on a foundation 
utterly inconsistent with the acknowledged char- 
acterof our Lord. In later editions, he has nothing 
left on which to rear such tender incidents as the 
sympathy of Jesus, the conduct of the sisters, and the 
grand truth evolved: “I am the resurrection and 
the life: he that believeth in me, though he were 
dead, yet shall he live ; and whosoever liveth and be- 
lieveth in me shall never die.” M. Renan declares 
that the narrative of the resurrection of Lazarus is 


* pp. 372, 373: + App., p. 508. 


252 APOLOGETICS. 


bound up with the last transactions in the life of Jesus 
by such strict ties, that if we reject it as imaginary 
the whole edifice, so solid, of the last weeks of the 
life of Jesus, is crushed by the same blow. 

It can be shown that, in this third period, Jesus 
is unfolding as pure a morality as in the first. Mat- 
thew, who reports the discourses so faithfully, repre- 
sents him as at this time summing up the law in 
love, in love to God and love to man (chap. xxii. 
37-40). It is clear that he is developing the plan 
of his work which had been all along before his 
mind. He is still contemplating the establishment 
of a kingdom, and the very same kingdom. This 
1s brought out in the parable reported by Matthew 
(XxV. 14-30), in which the master distributes talents 
among his servants, and departs with the assurance 
that he will return. The new kingdom is to be 
established in consequence of the death of the Son 
(Mat. xxi. 33; Mark xii. 1-12). He had been 
announcing his death for a considerable time (Mark 
ix. 31), “For he taught his disciples and said unto 
them, The Son of Man is delivered into the hands 
of men, and they shall kill him, and after that he is 
killed, he shall rise the third day.” He brings out 
clearly that it is through his death that life is to be 
imparted to the church (John xii. 24): “Verily, 
verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat 
fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but 
if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.” The death 
is an atonement for sin, for when he takes the cup 
he says (Mat. xxvi. 28): “For this is my blood of 
the New Testament, which is shed for many for the 


OUR LORD'S LATTER DAYS. 253 


remission of sins.” He gives instructions as to the 
discipline, communion, and prayer to be instituted 
and kept up in the church when he should have 
departed (Mat. xviii. 20): “For where two or 
three are gathered together in my name, there am 
I in the midst of them.” -It is clear that it is the 
same kingdom which was to be entered by repent- 
ance and regeneration that is to be continued by 
worship and holy fellowship. 

It may be allowed that Jesus becomes more faith 
ful in his warnings, first to the Galileans, and then 
to the Jews at Jerusalem, as he draws near the 
close of his pilgrimage. But there is no trace of 
bitterness or disappointment. ‘The darkness, no 
doubt, is becoming denser; but the eclipse had 
begun at the commencement of his atoning work: 
we see it in the temptation immediately following 
the baptism. And he continues as loving, as ten- 
der, as full of sympathy, as he ever was. Nay, 
have we not all felt as if the prospect of his death 
and of his parting with his disciples imparted an 
additional pathos to these heart utterances of our 
Lord? That sun looks larger, and glows upon 
us with a greater splendor as he sets. ‘The plant 
sends forth a greater richness of odor by being 
crushed. The fragrance is poured forth in richer 
effusion from the alabaster box when it is broken. 
Certain it is, that some of the tenderest incidents in 
our Lord’s life occur towards its close. It was at 
the period when he is supposed to have been soured ; 
it was when he had left Galilee for the last time, 
and was setting his face steadfastly towards Jeru- 


254. APOLOGETICS. 


salem, — that he rebuked the disciples, when they 
were for calling down fire from heaven (Luke ix. 
-55). It was at this time that he took little children 
in his arms, when the disciples would have driven 
them away, saying, “Of such is the kingdom of 
heaven” (Mat. xix. 14). It was in one of his last 
visits to Jerusalem that he looked so complacently 
upon the poor widow casting her mite into the treas- 
ury (Mark xii. 42). It was as he hung upon the 
cross that, turning to Mary, he said, “ Woman, 
behold thy son;” and, turning to John, he said, 
“Behold thy mother.” I know that our critic has 
cast doubts on this incident, but very fruitlessly. A 
great living historian has argued that certain letters 
must be genuine; for, on the supposition that they 
are fictitious, they must have been written by a 
Shakspeare. The argument is not altogether con- 
clusive, for they might have been written by one 
with a genius like that of our great poet. Now we 
here argue in the same way: but our argument is 
conclusive, for none but the highest poet could have 
conceived such an incident; and the evangelists, 
however highly elevated spiritually, had not the 
skill of our unmatched dramatist. The same may 
be said of the comfortable assurances given by our 
Lord to the thief on the cross, “To-day thou shalt 
be with me in Paradise;” and of his dying prayer, 
“Father, forgive them; for they know not what they 
do.” This petition, and the confiding expression, 
“Into thy hands I commend my spirit,” were the 
fitting close of a life devoted to the redemption of 
man and the manifestation of the Divine glory. 


Less 


UNITY OF OUR LORD’s LIFE, —IN THE ACCOUNTS GIVEN OF 
Him, —In His METHOD OF TEACHING, —IN HIS PERSON, 
— AND IN His WORK. 


N this Lecture I am to show that the life, the 
character, and mission of our Lord are one in 
idea, in purpose, in accomplishment, and result. 
In doing this I have two ends in view. One is to 
furnish evidence of the genuineness of the whole. 
M. Renan argues that we have the Sermon on the 
Mount and the Parables very much as Jesus 
delivered them; for the evangelists were incapable 
of conceiving them, and if they had attempted to 
add or to alter they would have spoiled them. It is 
the same with our Lord’s life. It is a conception 
which no Galilean, Jew, Greek, Oriental, or Roman 
could have formed, and which could not have grown 
into such beauty and consistency out of popular tradi- 
tion. Another purpose may also be accomplished ; 
and that is, to show that in accepting Christ’s life we 
must accept it entire, — doctrine, miracles, and pre- 
cepts. Our Lord’s life is woven throughout and 
without seam, and cannot be divided : we must either 
take all or get none. 
(1) We have four Gospels, and yet the account 


256 APOLOGETICS. 


which they give ts one. ‘There is a beautiful unity 
and corisistency in the character and acts of our 
Lord as exhibited by the whole four. 

But then it is said that there are discrepancies and 
contradictions in their narratives when compared 
one with another. And there certainly is not in 
these biographies that labored consistency which 
we always find in a ¢rumped-up story, and which 
so prejudices all who are in the way of shrewdly 
estimating testimony. The writers are artless in 
every thing; but they are specially so in this, that, 
conscious of speaking the truth, they are not careful 
to reconcile what they say in one place with what 
they or others may say in another place. J admit 
that we have such differences as are always to be 
found in the reports of independent witnesses; but 
I deny that there are contradictions. Commentators 
may differ, and are at liberty to do so, as to the 
explanations which they offer of the apparent dis- 
crepancies. All meanwhile may agree in declar- 
ing that the difficulties arise solely from our not 
knowing more than the evangelists have told us, 
and that they would vanish if we knew all the cir- 
cumstances. To illustrate what I mean in a very 
familiar way: One day, when passing along the 
streets of the city in which I lived at the time, I saw 
that there was a house on fire about half a mile off; 
and as I happened to have an official interest in a 
dwelling in that quarter, used for a philanthropic 
purpose, I proceeded towards the spot. Meeting a 
person who seemed to be coming from the fire, | 


APPARENT DISCREPANCIES. 257 


asked him where it was, and he told me it was ina 
certain street. Passing on towards that street, I 
asked another person where the fire was, and he 
gave me the name of.a different street. J asked a 
third witness about the fire: he told me he had 
been there, and it was nearly extinguished. I met 
a fourth individual a little way farther on, and he 
informed me that it was blazing with greater fury 
than ever. Had I stopped here, 1 might have been 
tempted to say, What a bundle of contradictions ! — 
one says the fire is in one street, and another that it 
is in a different street: one says that the flames are 
nearly extinguished and another says they are 
increasing ; and had I stopped it might have been 
impossible for me to reconcile the inconsistencies. 
But I had reason to be concerned about that fire, 
and so I went on, and found that all the witnesses 
had spoken the truth. The house was a corner 
one, between the two streets which had been named: 
the flames had been kept down for a time, but after- 
wards burst forth with ‘greater fury than ever. 
Nowhere in these Gospels do we meet with such 
violent discrepancies as I had in the statements 
of these four men. But I have a deep interest 
in the depositions of the evangelical biographers. 
For there is a fire burning in the earth, a fire 
burning in my bosom, and I am supremely con- 
cerned to know how it may be extinguished, as I 
hope it may be by Him of whom these witnesses 
testify ; and I go on to combine their declarations, 
and to inquire whether, after all, there be any real 


~ 


258 APOLOGLTICS. 


contradictions. I take up those passages dwelt 
upon by the infidel. 

Luke tells us, ii. r: “And it came to pass in 
those days, that there went out a decree from Cesar 
Augustus, that all the world should be taxed;” 
anoyougesia moar THY olzovuerny: that the whole Ro- 
man world should be enrolled. “(And this taxing 
[or census] was first made when Cyrenius was 
governor of Syria.) And all went to be taxed [or 
enrolled], every one into his own city. And Joseph 
also went.” Now it so happens that Josephus, 
usually a correct historian as to his own times, tells 
us that Cyrenius, or Quirinius, took charge of a 
taxation in Judea, but at a considerably later date. 
Proceeding on this, the infidel tells us that Luke 
must be wrong here; and Renan argues that the 
whole account of our Lord’s being born in Beth- 
lehem must be a later legend, inserted to make our 
Lord’s birth correspond to the prophecy of Micah. 
I remember that when I was a student of theology 
we were greatly perplexed with this; for the key 
to unlock the mystery had not then been found. 
But later German scholarship has very much 
cleared up this subject. It is shown first that the 
two Roman historians, Tacitus and Suetonius, 
represent Augustus as issuing about this time an 
edict, that throughout the empire and the allied 
States there should be accounts taken of the 
number of the inhabitants, of the property, and 
its liability to taxation, —this, years before the tax- 
ation mentioned by Josephus. Then, secondly, a 


RECONCILIATION OF DIFFERENCES. 259 


German scholar, Zumpt, has shown that in the roll 
of the successive Syrian proconsuls there occurs a 
blank at that time, and reasons can be given for 
filling up the blank with the name of Quirinius, 
who appears to have been governor of Syria from 
aboUuDA. U.G..750 to 4753. “hus it turns out that 
both Luke and Josephus are right: there was first 
a census in the time of Augustus, and then a taxing 
at a later date; and Quirinius had to do with both. 
And it is a circumstance worthy of being mentioned, 
that Luke, wiser than his critics, seems to have 
known of both; and as he mentions the one in his 
Gospel, so he refers to the other in his second 
work, Acts v. 37, where he speaks of Judas 
of Galilee rising up in the days of the taxing. 
This discovery helps us to clear up another diffi- 
culty. Roman law, says M. Renan, did not require 
Joseph and Mary to leave Nazareth, the place 
where they dwelt, and go up to Bethlehem, in order 
to have their names enrolled. All true, as regards 
Roman law. But when Jesus was born (two years 
after it would have been different), Herod, an ally 
of Augustus, was king of Judea, which was goy- 
erned by Jewish and not by Roman law; and, 
according to Jewish law, the place to which they 
had to go in order to be enrolled was Bethlehem, as 
they were both of the house and lineage of David, 
and had legal claims there, according to the Jew- 
ish law of inheritance. Thus the objection turns 
against him who urges it, and shows a beautiful 
correspondence, of the nature of an undesigned coin- 


260 APOLOGETICS. 


cidence, between the Jewish law and customs and 
the narrative of the evangelist. Luke, by simply 
speaking the truth, has avoided a blunder into 
which his critic, with all his learning, would have 
fallen, had he constructed, as he has endeavored to 
construct, a gospel. We see how men who simply 
speak what they know will always be justified in 
the end, while those who would construct artificial 
narratives will be exposed, sooner or later. 

As to the apparent discrepancies between the 
evangelists, there is often room for difference of 
opinion as to the proper reconciliation ; and a candid 
man may often find it proper to say, I believe both 
accounts, and I am sure they could be reconciled 
if we knew the whole facts. Sometimes the diffi- 
culty is to be removed by supposing that the two 
evangelists are not recording the same events, but 
different incidents so far alike. It is clear that our 
Lord proceeded on a system or method in the deeds 
he performed, and was in the way of performing 
very much the same sort of deeds at different times 
and places. Thus we have him multiplying loaves 
and fishes on two several occasions. Matthew tells 
us (xv. 32-393; see also Mark viii. 1-9) that Jesus 
fed four thousand, but he had previously told us 
that he had fed five thousand; and if he had not 
done so, the infidel might have urged that Matthew 
(xv. 32-39) was contradicted by John (vi. 5-16), 
where we are told that five thousand were fed. It 
is clear that there were two such transactions; that 
Mark records the one and John the other, while 


GENEALOGIES OF OUR LORD. 261 


Matthew details both. It appears then that we may 
remove some of the seeming inconsistencies by help | 
of the principle, that our Lord having certain spe- 
cific ends in view, to be accomplished by certain 
kinds of works, does often repeat himself, even as 
God the Creator repeats himself by like organs and 
members and plants and animals and earths and 
moons and suns running through all creation. 
More frequently we are to account for the seeming 
discrepancy by the very simple and intelligible fact, 
that one witness gives one feature, and another sup- 
plies a different feature, and that we are to combine 
the two, if we would have the whole figure before. 
us. As an example of the first, I may refer to the 
healing of the nobleman’s son (John iv. 46-54), 
when our Lord was at a distance, which is not the 
same as the healing of the centurion’s servant (Matt. 
Vill. 5-13): for though the two incidents resemble 
each other, both being after the type of our Lord’s 
miracles, yet they are not the same; for, in the one 
case, the person cured was a son, in the other he 
was aservant. Asan example of the second, — that 
is, of the two recorded incidents being the same, — 
I quote Matt. viii. 5-13, where the occurrence is the 
same as that of the centurion’s servant (Luke vil. 
1-10), though the two narrators give different details 
of one and the same transaction. 

There is a palpable discrepancy between the 
genealogy of our Lord as given by Matthew and 
by Luke. In saying so, I do not refer merely to 
the circumstance that the one goes back only to 


262 APOLOGETICS. 


Abraham, whereas the other ascends to Adam; 
but to real differences in the account. The number 
of ancestors in the two rolls is not the same, nor 
are the individual names identical. Matthew’s divi- 
sion into three fourteens gives forty-two ancestors 
from Jesus to Abraham, whereas Luke reckons 
fifty-six. Matthew (i. 6) makes the descent from 
David through Solomon; whereas Luke (iii. 31) 
makes it from David through Nathan, “which was 
the son of Nathan, which was .the son of David.” 
Some have tried to explain this by supposing that 
Matthew gives the genealogy through the Virgin 
Mary (i. 16): “Joseph the husband of Mary, of 
whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ;” 
whereas Luke’s is confessedly the genealogy 
through Joseph (iil. 23), “being, as was supposed, 
the son of Joseph, which was the son of Heli.” 
Now there is no doubt that Joseph and Mary were 
both of the tribe of Judah, and the family of David: 
it is probable that Mary, the mother of Jesus, was 
the daughter of Jacob, and first cousin to Joseph, 
her husband. But this very circumstance renders 
it impossible for us to reconcile the differences, for it 
would make the lineage one backward from the 
grandfather of Joseph and Mary, whereas they are 
different throughout. The subject has been taken 
up and discussed with great care and a large amount 
of success, by Lord Arthur Hervey, in an elaborate 
volume.* Matthew’s genealogy, he argues, is 
meant to show that Jesus was legal successor to the 


* Genealogies of our Lord. 


GENEALOGIES OF MATTHEW AND LUKE. 263 


throne of David; and therefore his descent is traced - 
through the line of kings, —through Solomon, Reho- 
boam, Abia, and Asa, and Jehosaphat, and Jehoram, 
and so forth. Luke, on the other hand, gives his 
private, his natural, his family genealogy, which 
he traces back to David through Nathan. Matthew 
shows that he was legally the heir of the throne of 
David, through the monarchs of Judah and their 
legal descendants. Luke brings out the real pro- 
genitors, who were not kings, though descended 
from David. You may understand what I mean, if 
you consider that a man might be the legal heir of 
a property which was not possessed by his father 
or grandfather, or actual progenitors for generations 
immediately past. In such a case he might have 
two genealogies, one through the persons possess- 
ing the property, the other of his proper, natural 
progenitors. By this simple principle the author 
brings the two accounts into harmony. To give 
only one example: The two genealogies coincide 
in the name of Matthan, or Matthat, (Matt. i. 15, 
and Luke iii. 24), “to whom two different sons, Jacob 
and Heli, are assigned but one and the same grand- 
son and heir, Joseph the husband of Mary.” The 
simple and obvious explanation is, “that Joseph was 
descended from Joseph, a younger son of Abiud (the 
Juda of Luke iii. 26), and that, on the failure of the 
line of Abiud’s eldest son in Eleazar, Joseph’s grand- 
father Matthan became the heir; that Matthan had 
two sons, Jacob and Heli; that Jacob had no son, 
and consequently that Joseph, the son of his younger 


264 APOLOGETICS. 


brother Heli, became heir to, his uncle and to the 
throne of David. Thus, the simple principle that 
one evangelist exhibits that genealogy which con- 
tained the successive heirs to David and. Solomon’s 
throne, while the other exhibits the paternal stem 
of him who was the heir, explains all the anomalies 
of the two pedigrees, — their agreements as well as 
their discrepancies, and the circumstance of their 
being two at all.” 

As to how it comes that there should be such a 
resemblance between the first three Gospels and 
yet such diversities, there is room for difference of 
opinion among those who may, speculate .on the 
subject. The following seems to me the most prob- 
able theory,—Jit is sanctioned by some profound 
German scholars: The particular incidents of Gos- 
pel history had been so repeatedly narrated by the 
apostles in their interviews one with another, and 
in their addresses to the church, that a certain type 
of narrative had formed itself. “The particular 
points, especially in sayings of Christ, were always 
reproduced: unusual expressions were the more 
firmly retained, since, when they were uttered, they 
had more strongly attracted the attention of the 
disciples. Sermons and sayings were naturally 
retained with more care, and reported with more 
uniformity, than incidents; although even in the 
latter, in the same degree that the incident was sur- 
prising and peculiar, a fixed type of narration had 
involuntarily formed itself.” It is thus we have 
found the members of a family, who have often had 


THE SYNOPTICS AND FOHN’S GOSPEL. 265 


occasion to talk to one another and to others of the 
virtues of a deceased parent, coming to repeat the 
same incidents in much the same language. In some 
such way as this we are to account for the curious 
sameness of event and phrase in the account given. 
As to the differences, they are easily explained by 
each writer so far following an independent course, 
as a witness and narrator, and having a special end 
in view. Matthew wrote specially to the Hebrews ; 
and, as he declares (i. 1), he sets before us Jesus 
as the son of David and the son of Abraham, the 
Messiah promised by the prophets. Mark ex- 
hibits Jesus (see i. 1) as the Son of God, and dwells 
forcibly on his deeds of power. Luke, the com- 
panion of Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles, shows, 
as he professes (iil. 38), how Jesus “ was the son of 
Adam, which was the son of God.” 

As to the obvious circumstance that John’s Gospel 
differs so much from the others, not only in the nar- 
rative, but in the sort of discourses put into our 
Lord’s mouth, I have never thought that it raises 
any very formidable difficulty. John tells us at the 
close of his Gospel, “ And there are also many other 
things which Jesus did, the which, if they should 
be written every one, I suppose that even the world 
itself could not contain the books that should be 
written.” Of the things which he did, of the words 
which he spake, we have only a few recorded. 
The first three evangelists give us so much: they 
give us what had been inscribed most deeply on the 


hearts and memories of the apostles at Jerusalem, 
12 


266 APOLOGETICS. 


each, however, writing independently of the others. 
John wrote his Gospel at a later date, and he stu- 
diously brings out other incidents of our Lord’s life, 
and’new features of his character. I believe that 
each writer presents our Lord under the aspect 
which most impressed him. Every scholar knows 
that we have something very much parallel in Gre- 
cian history. We have two separate and independent 
accounts of the great Greek teacher, who, of all 
heathens, most resembles our Lord in _ his life, 
in his teaching, and in his death, though in all 
respects falling infinitely beneath the perfect model. 
One of these is by Xenophon, a soldier, a man of 
the world, and trained in the business of life: he 
has given us a plain narrative of the acts and com- 
mon conversation of Socrates, bringing out fully 
to view his earnestness, his shrewdness, his high 
moral aims, and his exalted views of the providence 
of God. The other is by Plato, the lofty speculator, 
the skilful dialectician, and the writer of such prose 
as only a poet of the highest order could compose. 
In the Socrates, of the Platonic dialogues, we have 
the subtle analyst, the acute cross-questioner, the 
exposer of pretension, the master of the most deli- 
cate irony, and the profound lover of wisdom, who 
can penetrate into the greatest depths to bring forth 
gold, and mount like Franklin’s kite into the heavens 
to draw down lightning. Whence the difference of 
the two representations? Some have at once and 
peremptorily declared that, while the one is a true 
picture, the other is an ideal figure drawn in the 


SOCRATES OF XENOPHON AND PLATO. 2647 


rich colors of Plato’s own mind. I have pondered 
much on this subject; and I am convinced that both 
are correct portraits, and of the same individual, 
but in different attitudes and when in different 
humors. I allow freely that Plato does at times use 
Socrates merely as a vehicle for expressing his own 
ideal speculations, and puts his own sentiments and 
language into the mouth of his master. But I am 
firmly convinced that Plato, after all, gives a true 
picture of one side of Socrates’s character, and brings 
out lofty characteristics which Xenophon was not 
capable of comprehending, or at least of appre- 
ciating. -I argue this from the circumstance that in 
the plainer narrative of Xenophon we have thoughts 
here and there ascribed to Socrates which carry us 
up towards that empyrean in which Plato makes 
him habitually dwell;* while Plato, ever and anon, 

* Thus, in Xenophon’s Memorabilia, B. Iv. c. iv., we have a 
dialogue with Hippias of Elis concerning Justice, very much in 
the spirit of the dialogues of Plato. ‘‘A/zApzas. I think that I 
have certainly something to say now which neither you nor any 
other person can refute. Socrates. By Juno, it is a great good 
you say you have discovered; since the judges will now cease 
from giving contradictory sentences, the citizens will cease from 
disputing about what is just, from going to law and from quar- 
relling, and communities will cease from contending about their 
rights and going to war; and I know not howl can part with 
you till I have learned so important a benefit from its discoverer. 
Hippias. You shall not hear it, by Jupiter, until you yourself 
declare what you think justice to be; for it is enough that you 
laugh at others, questioning and confuting everybody, while you 
-yourself are unwilling to give a reason to anybody, or to declare 
your opinion on any subject. Socrates. What, then, have you 


not perceived that I never cease declaring my opinions as to what 
I conceive to be just,” &c. — Watson’s Translation. 


268 APOLOGETICS. 


brings him down to the earth and makes him utter 
practical maxims quite in the spirit of the conversa- 
tions detailed by the other biographer. 

It is much the same with the two accounts which 
we have of the life of our Lord, that in the Synop- 
tical Gospels on the one hand, and that in John’s 
Gospel on the other. Both are true, and both are 
delineations of the same lofty character standing 
on the earth, but with his head in the sunshine of 
heaven. I argue so from the fact that in Matthew, 
Mark, and Luke, we have here and‘there sayings 
of our Lord quite in the spirit of those recorded by 
John; and that in John there are plain familiar 
statements quite in the manner of the first three 
evangelists. Thus the address of Jesus, in Matt. 
xi. 25, reads as if it were recorded by John: “At 
that time Jesus answered and said, I thank thee, 
O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou 
hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and 
hast revealed them unto babes. Even so, Father, 
for so it seemed good in thy sight. All things are 
delivered unto me of my Father; and no man 
knoweth the Son, but the Father; neither knoweth 
any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whom- 
soever the Son will reveal him.” On the other hand, 
certain narratives in John read as if they had been 
written by Matthew or Luke, as (v. 8): “And a 
certain man was there, which had an infirmity thirty 
and eight years.” “Jesus saith unto him, Rise, take 
up thy bed, and walk. And immediately the man 
was made whole, and took up his bed, and walked: 


YESUS UNDER DIFFERENT VIEWS. 269 


and on the same day was the Sabbath,” &c. It is 
the same person; but the two portraits, though both 
correct likenesses, are different, in that one brings 
one set of attitudes or expressions into prominence, 
and another a different set. In the one we have 
certain qualities which all the disciples compre- 
hended and relished, and we have specially his 
human side brought fully into view; whereas the 
apostle who leaned on his bosom, and evidently 
looked into that bosom, and was warmed by it, has 
brought out perfections of our Lord founded in the 
depths of his divine nature. From that day to this 
the great body of Christians have always turned first 
to the Synoptic Gospels; while there have always 
been a select few who have felt that the disciple of 
love carries them closer to the inner nature, to the 
heart of Jesus. We should thank God for providing 
both, that all and each may find something to attract 
the eye and gain the confidence of the heart. 

The light which comes from the sun is one and 
the same; but how different are the colors as re- 
flected from different objects! The same rays fall 
on every part of that plant, but from the leaves are 
reflected the soft and lively green, and from the 
flowers the deeper purple or the brighter red or 
yellow. So it is with Him who is expressively 
called the sun of righteousness and the light of the 
world: he shone on all the evangelists alike, but 
each reflects the hue that most impressed him. I 
am tempted once more to use a familiar illustration 
from my own history. My father died when I was 


270 APOLOGETICS. 


a boy, and I have a dimmer recollection of him 
than I could wish. In order to get a clearer idea 
of him, I have applied to different persons. I have 
applied to neighbors; I have applied to elder 
sisters; I have applied to a nearer still, to his 
widow and my mother. The accounts given by 
them were substantially one; but they differed in 
some points, and the most endearing of all was 
by the dearest friend. I believe that the disciple 
whom Jesus loved was able to enter into and recip- 
rocate some of the deepest and yet the most 
delicate of the characteristics of our Lord. As 
being himself struck with them, he has recorded the 
incidents and preserved the discourses in which 
they were exhibited. It is in John’s Gospel that it 
is so pressed upon us (chap. iil.) that there must 
be a spiritual change before we can enter the king- 
dom of God; and (in chap. vi.) that we must feed 
by faith on the body and blood of Jesus if we 
would have life in us. Itis in this same Gospel 
that we have so tender a view of the sympathy 
of Jesus as he wept over the grave of Lazarus 
(chap. xi.); such gracious promises of the out- 
pouring of the Spirit (xiv. and xvi.); and of the 
intimate relation between the Father and the Son 
(x. 30),— “I and my Father are one;” and of the 
followship between the Father and the Son (in 
chap. xvil.), —“ O righteous Father, the world hath 
not known thee: but I have known thee, and these 
have known that thou hast sent me. And I have 
declared unto them thy name, and will declare it: 


FOHN S FICTURE OF CHRIST. 271 


that the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be 
in them, and I in them.” 

May I not go a step farther? May we not with- 
out presumption believe that Jesus unfolded his 
doctrine as his listeners were able to bear it? If I 
address Sabbath-school children, I speak in one 
way; if I preach to a congregation on the_Sabbath, 
I have to speak in a different manner; if I lecture 
to a class in college, I have to speak in yet a third 
way. I am ashamed to refer to myself in sucha 
connection. But if man with imperfect knowledge 
and small resources has to do this, may we not 
suppose that He in whom dwelt all wisdom was 
ready to pour it out in the measure which his 
hearers could receive it? I am inclined to think 
that, while all received much, John took in most, 
and so has been able to give out most, of the pro- 
fundity of our Lord’s doctrine and the tenderness 
of his sentiment. However we may account for it, 
there is certainly a glow rich and pure and yet 
somewhat mystic, as if it required to be dulled be- 
fore we could gaze upon it, round our Lord’s person, 
as we gaze upon him in the light in which he is 
presented in the pages of the beloved apostle. 

And as to the apostle’s own style in his Gospel 
and in his three Epistles being so like that of our 
Lord, we are to account for it as we explain the same- 
ness of style in prose, poetry, and painting, on the 
part of pupils and the masters whom they admire. 
I believe it is to be traced to the circumstance that 
John, as he leant upon the bosom of his Master, had 


272 APOLOGETICS. 


drunk into his spirit, and moulded himself in style 
as in character upon the great Exemplar. 

(2) There ts a unity in our Lord’s method of 
teaching. Every one sees and feels at once that 
there is something peculiar in his manner of im- 
parting instruction. It originates with himself: it 
is fresh and novel. It. differed equally from the two 
modes employed by the eminent teachers of his 
time, from the Rabbinical method of the Jewish 
doctors and the Dialectic method of the Greek and 
Roman philosophers. 

It differed from the Rabbinical method, which 
appeared soon after the Babylonish captivity, 
which became permanently embodied in the 
Mishna and Talmud, written some ages after the 
time of our Lord, and has been continued by 
the Jewish doctors to this day. ‘Those who look 
into the Jewish works see a considerable amount 
of acuteness and ingenuity running to waste, and 
may find precious grains of wheat here and there 
in bushels of chaff. The Rabbinical teachers pro- 
fessed to be expounders of the Old Testament 
Law, but they paid no regard to its spirit and its 
moral lessons. ‘The passage was studied with the 
view of drawing from it formal restrictions and 
ingenious conceits. Passing by the obvious mean- 
ing, they discovered a deep signification in certain 
words and phrases, and drew inferences from 
particles and the position of particles. In doing 
this they indulged in ingenious fancies, and labo- 
riously employed themselves in constructing silly 


THE RABBINICAL METHOD. 273 


legends, dealing, as Paul says (1 Tim. i. 4), in 
fables and genealogies. ‘These were handed down 
from father to son, and in the course of ages so 
accumulated that they overloaded the simple truth, 
and buried it in dust as effectively as the ashes from 
Vesuvius buried Pompeii and Herculaneum. All 
the commandments were interpreted in a narrow 
spirit, and minute regulations laid down as to the 
outward conduct and smaller duties, — the tithing 
of mint, anise, and cummin, — while the weightier 
matters of the law were neglected. Not only so, 
but by the additions which they made, they often 
perverted the whole meaning and spirit of the law. 
Thus in regard to the fifth commandment: “ Ye say, 
Whosoever shall say to his father or his mother it is 
a gift, by whatsoever thou mightest be profited by 
me, and honor not his father or his mother, he shall 
be free. Thus have ye made the commandment 
of God of none effect by your traditions.” It was 
thus, too, that they perverted the seventh command- 
ment, by giving, under one pretext or other, unre- 
stricted liberty of divorce. In such interpretations 
they differed as widely from each other as they did 
from Scripture; and this gave rise to numerous 
schools, which contended with each other, and all 
in the same spirit, thus gendering, as Paul expresses 
it (1 Tim. vi. 4), “ questions and strifes of words.” 

Our Lord must have been familiar with this mode 
of instruction ; and the people knew what it was, as 
they listened to the teaching in the synagogue from 
Sabbath to Sabbath. Jesus proceeds in an entirely 


r2% 


274 APOLOGETICS. 


different manner, and the people at once discover 
it. It is said of him, after delivering the Sermon 
on the Mount: “It came to pass when Jesus had 
ended these sayings, the people were astonished at 
his doctrine. For he taught them as one having 
authority, and not as the Scribes.” Going beneath 
the outward conduct, he seeks to reach and to sway 
the motives, and requires and enforces a change of 
heart, saying, “Except ye be converted, and become 
as little children, ye shall not enter into the king- 
dom of heaven.” “Out of the heart proceed evil 
thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, 
false witness, blasphemies: these are the things that 
defile a man: but to eat with unwashen hands defi- 
leth not a man.” Our Lord takes great pains in his 
Sermon on the Mount to correct these perversions 
of the Jewish doctors, to remove the rubbish of 
traditions, and to bring back his hearers to the true 
interpretation of the spirit of the law, — showing 
how the sixth commandment, in forbidding murder, 
condemns all the malignant passions which lead to 
it; how the seventh, in forbidding adultery, con~ 
demns all the thoughts and lusts which might end 
in the outward act. In dealing with mankind, he 
seeks first to gain their faith and confidence; he en- 
courages them by forgiving their sins and curing 
their maladies, if they have any, and then brings 
them under the law of love. “Thou shalt love the 
Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy 
soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and 
great commandment. And the second is like unto 


THE DIALECTIC METHOD. 275 


it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” His 
hearers felt that they were listening to a very dif- 
ferent teacher from any they had ever heard be- 
fore; “who taught them as one having authority, 
and not as the Scribes.” But his method differed 
as essentially from the other employed in his day ; 
from — | 

The Dialectic AMlethod, or the method of the 
heathen philosophers. The Apostle Paul knew 
both. ‘Bred at the feet of Gamaliel, one of the most 
famous of the Jewish doctors, he knew the Rab- 
binical Method, and would evidently have been 
inclined to follow it, had he not been taught by a 
higher Master, who cast down his pride on the 
road to Damascus, and made him receive instruction 
as a little child, and drink in a new spirit. And he 
also knew the other method from his acquaintance 
with the schools of Greek Philosophy, acquired 
at ‘Tarsus, a city of no mean reputation for Greek 
learning. He refers to it once and again, calling 
it “the wisdom of words,” “the wisdom of this 
world.” “The Jews,” he says, “require a sign: 
the Greeks seek after wisdom.” I call it the Dia- 
lectic Method. The phrase was applied first to 
the Eleatic School, which indulged in subtle dis- 
tinctions as to the nature of being; and the method 
was used more or less by all the Greek and Roman 
speculative thinkers, and in many cases degenerated 
into mere quibbling, into sophistic or eristic. Do 
not understand me as speaking against the study 
of the ancient philosophy, so much superior to that 


276 . APOLOGETICS. 


to which some of our colleges would turn the mind 
of our youth in the present day,—the wretched 
and debasing systems of positivism or materialism. 
The “Memorabilia” of Xenophon, with its lessons 
of Socrates; the “ Dialogues of Plato; ” the logical 
and metaphysical works of Aristotle ; and the moral 
maxims of the Stoics, particularly the “ Meditations ” 
of Marcus Aurelius, — are about the highest products 
of human intellect in ancient times, and are worthy of 
the eager study of any educated man. But how 
different from the discourses of Jesus, both in their 
subjects, and manner of treating them! First, the 
Greek philosophies treat chiefly of speculative ques- 
tions, of the nature of substance, the origin of 
worlds, the elements out of which all things are 
produced; and they do not investigate them in the 
Method of Induction introduced by Bacon, —that 
is, by the careful collation of facts, —but by subtle 
analysis, by discussion, by arguments on the one 
side or other; and some of them, such as Plato and 
the Academic sect, scarcely profess to reach any 
settled or satisfactory results. None of them pro- 
fesses to speak with authority; and most of them 
leave the great religious and moral questions, —as, 
for instance, in regard to the nature of God and the 
immortality of the soul,—#in a state of doubt and 
uncertainty. Where mankind have no other light, 
when there is no light shining upon them from 
heaven, men may usefully resort to such tapers to 
help them to grope their way in the darkness. But 
Christ can speak, and does speak, in a very differ- 


~ 


OUR LORDS TEACHING. 277 


ént manner. He resorts to no sophistic distinctions, 
or lengthened ratiocinations difficult to follow, liable 
to be disputed, and in which subtle error may lurk; 
but he speaks as one having authority. He claims 
such authority, — authority to speak the truth con- 
cerning God and the world to come; authority to 
lay down and explain the law, and to point out the 
way by which man may rise to eternal fellowship 
with God. And as he speaks, we feel that he has 
authority to do so. He tells us much which we 
could never have discovered of ourselves; but when 
he announces it, there is something in us which 
responds to it. All history shows that mankind are 
not able of themselves to discover the unity of God 
and his holy and spiritual nature; but when Christ 
proclaims it in the Word, we see that it is, that it 
must be, true. Unaided reason has never arisen to 
a pure conception of the moral law; but when it is 
proclaimed in the Sermon on the Mount, there 
is found to be a law in the heart which approves 
of it. Jesus speaks as having authority, and there is 
a conscience in us which declares that we ought to 
bow before it. We might not yield to the Scribes: 
there is nothing in their formal rules and endless 
restrictions to gain our better nature. We may 
refuse to give in to the acute arguments of the 
Greeks: we might rather be tempted to square arms 
and fight them, and to raise objections and start 
theories of our own. But when Christ speaks, and 
tells us of “God who is a Spirit,” and of the temper 
which we ought to cherish, and the duties devolving 


278 APOLOGETICS. 


on us, we feel that we cannot, that we should not, 
resist, that we ought at once to bow before him in 
implicit faith and willing obedience. 

We recall many able reasoners, many eloquent 
orators, in ancient and modern times, in ancient 
Greece and Rome, in modern Europe and America ; 
but here is one who is different from them all, and 
who speaks as never man spake. ‘The truth is so 
perspicuous and so profound, that we are sure it is 
uttered from the clear depths of heaven; and yet, as 
it comes to us and penetrates us, we feel that it has 
come through one who is on the earth, who knows 
what is in man, who knoweth our frame and re- 
membereth that we are dust; we feel that it is 
addressed to us by a fellow-man, by a brother, — it 
so touches and melts and moves our hearts. ‘The 
discourses of men of profound thought have corn- 
monly tended to drive away little children; but the 
words of Jesus, as it were, say, “ Suffer the little chil- 
dren to come unto me, and forbid them-not.” Plato 
and the Greek philosophers spoke and wrote only 
for the educated, and never thought of addressing 
the great mass of the people, who were in fact 
despised by them. But the prediction regarding 
Christ was, not only that he would open the eyes of 
the blind, but that by him the poor were to have the 
‘gospel preached to them; and it was found in fact — 
that “the common people heard him gladly.” ‘This 
constituted a new era in the history of the world, as 
it was the means of raising the great mass of the 
people. While achild, asavage, can understand and 


UNITY OF PERSON. 279 


appreciate our Lord’s discourses, the profoundest 
thinkers are made to feel that there are depths here, 
deeper than hell, which they cannot fathom ; heights 
higher than heaven which they cannot gauge. We 
feel as we do when we gaze into the expanse of 
heaven on a clear night, and see every star shining so 
distinctly, and yet are made to realize that there are 
depths there far beyond our vision. When officers 
were sent out by the Jewish council to apprehend 
Jesus, they were induced to listen; and, as they did 
so, they were awed, and felt themselves incapable 
of fulfilling their purpose, and returned to say so to 
those who commissioned them. And not a few who 
have begun to read his words, with the view of find 
ing fault and getting matter to condemn him, have 
been obliged to say, “Never man spake like this 
man.” 

(3) Therets a unity in the account given of the 
Person of our Lord. Everywhere Christ is spoken 
of and acts as man, fully and altogether man. Thus 
is he foretold in the prophecies, thus he appears on 
the earth. Of the race of Adam, the seed of the 
woman, the seed of Abraham, the son of David, 
born of the Virgin Mary, —he has all the sinless 
characteristics, bodily and mental, of our nature. 
liable to weakness, acquainted with grief, full of the 
milk of human kindness and of compassion. ‘The 
biographers speak of him as born; as growing in 
wisdom and stature; as wearied, athirst, hungry ; as 
rejoicing, sorrowing, in pain; bleeding, dying, and 
being buried. The language of John is as express 


280 APOLOGETIGS: 


on this subject as that of the other three evangelists. 
For he tells us that the Word became flesh and 
dwelt among us; and some of the most human inci 
dents of his life are recorded by this evangelist, 
such as his close intimacy with the two sisters, 
Martha and Mary, and their brother Lazarus. 
When speaking of himself, he takes the name of the 
Son of Man, —the representative man, the model 
man. He shows us what man would have been had 
he not sinned; and yet shows what man had never 
been had he not sinned, and produced suffering to 
call forth sympathy. He shows us what man puri- 
fied is to become in heaven; and yet what man will 
not be in heaven, for in heaven there will be no 
sin nor suffering to call forth forgiveness and pity 
such as Christ exhibited on earth. Thusis he man, 
but unique as man, flowing pure as a river through 
the midst of pollution, which calls forth the deepest 
commiseration, and which he would sweep away 
without himself being stained by it. 

But while he is man, very man, it is clear that he 
1s something more. ‘This appears everywhere on _ 
the surface; and as we dig down, we see how deep 
it goes, and we find that it is ever casting up. It 
has often been noticed that the inspired writers 
seldom take the trouble of asserting that God exists: 
they no more think it needful to do so than to assert 
their own existence. They assume that God exists, 
and they presume that men believe in his existence, 
and proceed to give a revelation of his will. In like 
manner they are not in the way of asserting that 


WORSHIP PAID TO $¥ESUS. 281 


Christ is a divine person, but they proceed upon the 
doctrine as allowed by the Church. ‘The doctrine 
is very prominent in John’s Gospel, where Jesus is 
represented as the Word who was “in the beginning,” 
“who was with God,” — an expression which shows 
that he was somehow different from the Father, and 
yet “was God” and the Maker of all things. But 
the same truth is constantly implied in the other 
Gospels, and is expressly stated ever and anon. If 
there is any doctrine more forcibly taught than 
another in Scripture, it is that there is only one 
God, and ‘that he will not allow worship to be paid 
to any other. When Peter went into the house of 
Cornelius, the centurion would have fallen down and 
worshipped him; but the apostle hastened to raise 
him up, saying, “Stand up: I myself also am a 
man.” When Paul and Barnabas performed a nota- 
ble miracle at Lystra, the ignorant heathens mistook 
them for the gods come down to earth, and would 
have done sacrifice with the people; but Paul and 
Barnabas were shocked at the proposal, and ran in 
among them and cried, “ Why do ye these things? 
We also are men of like passions with you.” But 
once and again divine honors are paid to Jesus, and 
he accepts them: Matt. viii. 2, a leper came and 
worshipped him; ix. 18, a ruler worshipped him; 
xiv. 33, they that were in the ship worshipped him ; 
XV. 25, the woman of Canaan came and worshipped 
him,—and he receives the homage, not as if he were 
vair. of it, but as if it were his due. It isin the close 
of Matthew, written specially to the Hebrews, who 


282 APOLOGHIUCS: 


stood up so resolutely for the unity of God, that our 
Lord is. represented as requiring all his followers to 
be baptized in the name of three persons: Matt. 
XxXVill. 19, “Go and teach all nations, baptizing 
them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, 
and of the Holy Ghost.” 

But, with two such natures, he is, after all, one, — 
quite as much so as the plant composed of animate 
and inanimate matter is one; quite as much so as the 
animal composed of a bodily and a sentient part is 
one; quite as much so as man composed of body 
and mind is one. How there should be such a 
union we are unable to say, just as we are not able 
to tell how our soul and body are united, and work 
so harmoniously. ‘To separate the divine and hu- 
man natures in Christ, we feel to be like separating 
soul and body in man, —the destruction and death 
of the whole. 7 

A living English writer has tried to give us. one 
of these aspects of our Lord without the other. I 
refer to Professor Seeley, of London University Col- 
lege, who, in “Ecce Homo,” has exhibited some 
very interesting and attractive views of our Lord’s 
character. J have known some young men, whose 
faith was being undermined, being profited by the 
study of the work; and the pictures which he pre- 
sents are so pure and lovely that I have known none 
who have been injured by it. Those who go heart- 
ily with him, and as far as he goes, will feel that 
they cannot stay there; that in consistency they 
must go farther, and take a profounder view of One 


UNITY OF WORK AND END. 283 


represented as so enlightened and spiritual, but who, 
to do what he is represented as doing, must have 
been more than man, who as he claimed to be God 
must really be divine. The features which he has 
portrayed so gracefully are those which we may 
conceive to have struck a young Church of England 
man, of cultured taste, who has been trained in the 
criticism of the age, and at a university where the 
highest refinement is imparted, and where all old 
religious opinions are being unsettled, but who feels 
that, whatever he may give up, he cannot give up 
Christ. He shows clearly that Christ from the be- 
ginning proposed to set up a kingdom of a‘spiritual 
character, and with high social aims, such as Eng- 
lish churchmen delighted to picture and expected 
to realize when established churches were in no 
danger. But he has not seen, after all, the true na- 
ture of Christ’s kingdom, which is to be entered by 
the strait gate of conversion, and to be composed 
of men born again of the Spirit. “Marvel not 
that I said unto you that ye must be born again.” 
Marvel not: it cannot be otherwise. Our nature 
requires it; and the kingdom is such that it requires 
a radical change before men can enter it. 

(4) There ts a unity in his Work and in the 
Find which he seeks to accomplish. Wis mission 
was one throughout, — that of one sent from the 
Father, sent into the world for mercy and not for 
judgment; travelling ever with a heavy load upon 
him, having for the fulfilling of his purposes to 
suffer and to die. The load of responsibility is 


284 APOLOGETICS. 


seen to be lying upon him at the age of twelve. 
“IT must be about my Father’s business ;” showing 
that, while he was subject to Joseph and Mary, he 


had another Father, and a work to do of which they — 


had no idea. He keeps the same aim before him 
through all his pilgrimage, in all his discourses, 
and in all his deeds. 

Fortunately I am not called in these Lectures to 
enter on the wide subject of miracles, which I 
have discussed elsewhere.* The school which I 
am opposing, admitting no @ przorz truth, cannot in 
consistency urge any @ przorz objections against 
surpernatural occurrences. Mr. Mill in particular 
has argued that it is possible to prove a miracle.f 
I am in these Lectures to show that there is evidence 
that Jesus performed deeds beyond the capacity of 
man and the laws of nature. 

We cannot take the discourses of our Lord and 
reject his deeds. We cannot accept his words and 
repel his miracles. His discourses are among the 
greatest of his miracles. ‘They would have been a 
miracle coming from any man, from a Greek in 
the farthest advanced stage of his nation’s culture: 
they are, a fortzorz, a miracle, as uttered by a work- 
man from Galilee. We have evidence, it is con- 
ceded, to prove that-his natural life must have been 


such as is detailed in the four Gospels; and that he. 


delivered his discourses very much as they have 
been reported. But it is impossible to separate be- 


* The Supernatural in relation to the Natural. 
+ opie, Bail. Gsxxy, 


—e 


MIRACLES AND SAYINGS. 2385 


tween his ordinary acts and discourses on the one 
hand, and his miracles on the other: they are 
woven through and through each other as weft and 
woof. They could be separated only by tearing 
the garment.to pieces. Let us notice that super- 
natural acts are mixed up with every part of our 
Lord’s life; in particular how they mingle with his 
discourses, so that some of his profoundest say- 
ings arose out of his miracles. We have a detailed 
account in the Gospels of between thirty and forty 
miracles, besides such general references as, “ Now 
when the sun was setting, all they that had any 
sick with divers diseases brought them unto him: 
and he laid his hands on every one of them, and 
healed them (Luke iv. 4o, cf. Matt. viii. 16, Mark 
i. 32); and again in his message to the Baptist 
(Matt. xi. 5), “The blind receive their sight, and 
the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deat 
hear, the dead are raised up.” 

Let us look at some of these miracles, that we 
may see how they are mixed up indissolubly with 
some of the first and most peculiar features of his 
character, and with some of the deepest of his say- 
ings. His miracle of turning water into wine is 
associated with his sanctioning of marriage and the 
marriage feast, and his delicate way of promoting 
the social joys of the poor (John ii. 1-11). At his 
first public appearance at Jerusalem, after the com- 
mencement of his ministry, he performs such mir- 
acles that Nicodemus comes to him and says, “No 
man can do these miracles that thou doest, except 


286 APOLOGETICS. 


God be with him;” and at the interview our Lord 
tells him that a man enters the kingdom of God 
by a spiritual change. The miraculous draught of 
fishes (Luke v. I-11) is associated with the charac- 
teristic trait of Peter falling down at Jesus’ knees, 
saying, “ Depart from me; for I am a sinful man, O 
Lord;” and our Lord’s giving so special a mission 
to his disciples, ‘‘ Fear not: from henceforth thou 
shalt catch men.” The fear of the apostles when 
“the storm arose to such a pitch on the Sea of Gali- 
lee, our Lord’s being asleep, and then rising and 
rebuking the winds and the sea, is felt to be beauti- 
fully symbolic and prophetic of his whole mission 
(Matt. viii. 23-27; Mark iv. 35-41; Luke vii. 
22-25). The raising of Jairus’ daughter, and of 
the widow’s son at a later date, both illustrate his 
sympathy with parents grieving over the death of 
beloved children. The healing of the woman with 
the issue of blood brings out some very interesting 
features of the suppliant: she was unwilling to be 
seen, and had such faith that she was sure that if 
she “but touched the hem of his garment she would 
be made whole ;” and when she was brought forth, 
she came trembling, and he said, “Go in peace, and 
be whole of thy plague.” The healing of the para- 
lytic (Matt. ix. 1-8) leads him to assume the power 
of forgiving sins, and to connect his healiz g with 
his forgiving power: “But that ye may know that 
the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins 
‘then saith he to the sick of the palsy), Arise, take 
up thy bed.” ‘The cleansing of the leper brings out 


MIRACLES AND SAYINGS. 287 


very beautifully the nature of faith, and the way in 
which Jesus responds: “Lord, if thou wilt, thou 
canst make me clean,” to which the answer is, “I 
will; be thou clean” (Matt. vi. 2,3). The healing 
of the heathen centurion’s servant (Matt. viii. 5-13 5 
and Luke vii. 1-10) gives us glimpses of the in- 
gathering of the Gentiles into the kingdom of God: | 
“I say unto you, I have not found so great faith, no, 
not in Israel.” —“ Many shall come from the east 
and from the west, and shall sit down with Abraham 
and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven.” 
The healing of the impotent man at the pool of 
Bethesda, followed by our Lord’s bidding him take 
up his bed, and walk, on the Sabbath, leads him to 
the condemnation of the Pharisaic view of the Sab- 
bath, and the profound saying, “ My Father worketh 
hitherto, and I work” (John v. 17). The feeding 
of the five thousand gives rise to that discourse 
so full of spiritual meaning, in which our Lord 
expounds his doctrine as to his body being meat 
indeed, and his blood being drink indeed (John vi. 
27 to end). His walking on the sea, and inviting 
Peter to come to him, led to the declaration, “Be 
of good cheer; it is 1; be not afraid” (Matt. xiv. 
22-23). The opening of the eyes of one born blind 
originates all those deeply interesting and instructive 
discourses in John ix., and to the man being cast out 
of the.synagogue. The restoring of the man with 
the withered hand leads to his gracious declaration, 
“But if ye had known what this meaneth, I will 
have mercy, and not sacrifice, ye would not have 


288 APOLOGETICS. 


condemned the guiltless,” and to the true doctrine 
of the Sabbath (Matt. xii. 7-13). The cleansing of 
the ten lepers brings out the instructive incident so 
characteristic of human nature, that only nine re- 
turned to give thanks (Luke xvii. 11-19). The 
healing of the daughter of the Syrophenician woman 
unfolds the importunateness of faith and the cer- 
tainty of its bringing a blessing. It is the finding 
of the coin in the fish’s mouth which leads him to 
enforce the duty of paying tribute. The raising of 
Lazarus discloses to our view nearly every tender 
feature in our Lord’s character: “Jesus wept.” — “I 
am the resurrection, and the life; he that believeth 
in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and 
whosoever liveth, and believeth in me, shall never 
die.” “The healing of Malchus’ ear) (loukemeacm 
49-51), besides being a proof of our Lord’s ten- 
derness in very trying circumstances, taught the 
disciples the nature of the instruments by which 
they were to propagate the truth; that is, not by the 
sword, but by spiritual weapons. ‘The resurrection 
of our Lord is the very keystone of the believer’s 
hopes. And whata rich fragrance gathers round 
the incidents of our Lord’s life after his resurrection, 
from his rising from the grave to his ascending into 
heaven! M. Renan allows that Jesus himself did 
not distinguish between the natural and the super- 
natural. Jam sure that our Lord did not deceive 
himself here. ‘The supernatural was to him as easy 
as the natural; the supernatural was as it were 
natural to him; and the two so minyle in every 


HIS MIRACLES AND MISSION. 289 


part of his public life that it is vain to seek to sepa- 
rate them, and to take the one without also taking 
the other. 

Our Lord’s miracles are a piece with his dis- 
courses, with his whole life, mission, and kingdom. 
It has been asserted or insinuated that, though Jesus 
may be supposed to have lived and to have spoken 
very much as he is described, his miracles may 
have been inserted by a later hand. But it is 
utterly inconceivable that miracles thus added 
should have so fitted into all the rest, — in design, 
spirit, and moral and spiritual lessons. Who added 
these miracles entirely in consonance with the 
whole purport of our Lord’s life ? Certainly not 
Matthew or Mark, acknowledged to be men of no 
genius or invention. If it be said that they rose up 
as popular stories, the answer is at hand: They 
would in this case have been incongruous, blunder- 
ing, inconsistent, as all legends are. We know 
what was the character of some of the legends 
which sprang up about this time, —as, for example, 
the miracles ascribed to Simon Magus by his 
followers. He is represented as flying through the 
air, as transforming himself into a serpent or goat, 
as putting on two faces, as rolling himself unhurt 
upon burning coals, as making statues to talk, and 
dogs of brass or stone to bark.* Depend upon it, 
this would have been the sort of miracles ascribed 
to our Lord, had they sprung from the wonder- | 
loving spirit of the times. I know a famous hall 


* Trench’s Notes on the Miracles, c. ili. 


oe) 


290 APOLOGETICS. 


in a European city, left all but complete by the 
architect when he died: he left only the stair and 
one or two minor parts unfinished, but no living 
man could carry out his grand conception; and all 
the portions added by others are acknowledged to 
be failures. I hold that if Jesus had left any part 
of his work unfinished, no man could have added 
to it without the addition being seen to be an incon- 
sistency and an encumbrance. 

Our Lord’s miracles were all essential parts of his 
one consistent life. They were wrought as evi- 
dences not only of his power, but of his mercy. 
They were throughout moral in their character, 
and spiritual in the ends contemplated by them. 
They were in fact embodiments of his whole 
character, exemplars of his whole teaching, em- 
blems of his whole mission. They consisted almost 
exclusively in the remedying of evils, in renova- 
tions and regenerations. There were some ex- 
ceptions no doubt, but these too were moral. There 
were, in particular, two miracles of judgment to 
exhibit the justice of God; but it is remarkable that 
one of these was wrought on an unconscious fig- 
tree, and the other on the lower animals, as if He 
who came to save men’s lives were unwilling to 
smite them. Both were directed against hypocrisy 
and inconsistency: in the one he smote the fig-tree, 
which should in these regions have brought forth 
first fruit and then leaves, but had produced leaves 
and no fruit, —like too many professors of religion ; 
by the other he punished the Gadarenes, who kept 


MIRACLES OF HEALING. 291 


swine contrary to the law of Moses, which they 
professed to reverence. But, with these instructive 
exceptions, all his other miracles were miracles 
of restoring, of reviving, of saving; and so were 
symbols of the works of Him who came to seek and 
to save that which was lost. The parables of the 
lost sheep brought back, of the lost money found, 
of the lost son in his father’s embrace, have all their 
counterparts in the diseased being made whole, in 
the lame walking, and the dead restored to life. 
His grand redeeming and saving mission is seen 
quite as clearly in his miracles as in his dis- 
courses. 

Every one must have observed that a large 
number of the miracles of our Lord consist in the 
healing of diseases. There was evidently a moral 
meaning, a spiritual lesson, in this. Disease is to 
the body what sin is to the soul: the one, like the 
other, is a disorder, a derangement. The cure 
of the one is a type of the healing of the other. 
He who removed the one showed that it was his 
mission to remove the other likewise. He who 
cured the paralytic showed that he had power on 
earth to forgive sins: “But that ye may know that 
the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive 
sins (then saith he to the sick of the palsy), Arise, 
take up thy bed, and walk. And he arose, and 
departed to his house” (Matt. ix. 6). These two go 
together: “ Who forgiveth all thine iniquities; who 
healeth all thy diseases” (Ps. cili. 3). Disease of 
the body is an expressive and awful representation 


292 APOLOGETICS. 


of the evil of sin. And I have often thought that 
particular diseases may be taken as furnishing af- 
fecting pictures of particular sins, —in their power, 
or their secrecy and subtlety, or their rapidity, or 
their weakening and prostrating effect, or their 
loathsomeness, or fatal issue. I believe that He 
who when on earth healed all manner of disease 
demonstrated thereby that he can cure all kinds 
of soul maladies. He who opened the eyes of the 
blind meant thereby to show that he is able to open 
the eyes of our understandings to discern the 
beauty of spiritual things. He who unstopped the 
ears of the deaf does still open the ear of faith, so 
that it attends to the intimation of God’s will, given 
in his Word and by his Spirit. He who allayed 
the burning fever does still assuage the fierce burn- 
ings of wrath and malice. He who stopped the 
issue of blood is powerful to stanch the outbursts 
of lust and temper. He who restored to soundness 
the encrusted and loathsome leper can make the 
selfish man generous, and the licentious man pure. 
He who made the lame to walk can rouse the dis- 
abled and impotent from their lethargy, and make 
them walk and run in the way of God’s command- 
ments. He who restored the withered hand does 
still impart life to our palsied faculties. He who 
calmed the demoniac, that could not be bound by 
cords or chains, can bring down and subdue the 
man of raging passion, and make him “sit at his 
feet clothed, and in his right mind.” Other miracles 
teach the same lessons, all in unison with his dis- 


CHRIST’S SUFFERINGS. 293 


courses. He who walked on the sea and calmed 
the agitated waters, is above all the powers of na- 
ture, and can still the troubles that rage around 
us, so that there is a great calm. He who fed 
the multitudes gives to his people “bread to eat 
of which the world knoweth not.” He who raised 
the dead does still quicken the spiritually dead, and 
restore them to newness of life. 

As he draws near the close of his earthly pil- 
grimage, he explains more fully the nature of his 
mission, and the way in which he was to accomplish 
it, by suffering and dying. “The Son of man came 
to seek and to save that which was lost.” He refers 
in mysterious language to the terrible conflict by 
which this was to be effected: “I have a baptism to 
be baptized with; and how am I straitened till it be 
accomplished.” He shows his disciples (Matt. xvi. 
21), “that he must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer 
many things of the elders, and chief priests, and 
Scribes, and be killed, and be raised again the third 
day.” John xii. 27: “Now is my soul troubled; 
and what shall I say? Father, save me from this 
hour.” In instituting the most significant and 
solemn rite of our religion, he points to his death 
as a sacrifice and an atonement for sin: “This cup 
is the New Testament in my blood, shed for many 
for the remission of sins.” In the garden he is “in 
agony,” and in the struggle prays that the cup may 
pass from him, adding, “ Nevertheless, not my will, 
but thine, be done.” On the cross he had to say: 
“My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” 


204 APOLOGETICS. 


When this question is put, no answer is given. 
To that forsaken son the Father deigns no reply. 
Let us come to the foot of the cross, and answer, 
“He was wounded for our transgressions, he was 
bruised for our iniquities.” 

Science seems to be joining with our felt experi- 
ence to show that our world has within deranging 
as well as arranging powers. Later research has 
taught no lesson so specially and effectively as this, 
that there has been a contest in our world from the 
beginning, a war of elements, a struggle of races. 
It is seen in the geological ages, as an anticipation 
of the deeper struggle in the historic ages, when 
human beings appear on the scene; and it becomes 
a contest between man and man, between sin and 
holiness. And is this to go on for ever, deepening, 
widening, as higher forces appear on the field, and 
weapons of a more terrible power come to be em- 
ployed in the fight? With a God looking down 
from above, we are sure that this is not to be so. 
But what is there in our world to stop this contest, 
and insure the victory on the right side? ‘There is 
no sufficiency in the physical agencies to do it. 
The power which knowledge gives may only place 
new weapons in the hands of evil. Nor is there 
any security that mental agencies will certainly 
accomplish it. For in this field passion excites 
passion, fire kindles fire, war breeds war, — as wave 
meets wave the gurgitation is increased. Yet we 
are sure that, under the government of a good God, 
the evil will at last be put under. And in Him who 


RECONCILIATION EFFECTED. 295 


was sent forth in the fulness of time we see how all 
this is to be accomplished. It is done by reaching 
the root of the evil. It is done, first, by the Son 
glorifying God. It is done in the work of the 
appointed Reconciler, by whom the law was mag- 
nified and made honorable, and divine justice sat- 
isfied, while room was opened up for the fullest 
manifestation of mercy. It is done in the name and 
nature of those who had so dishonored God; so that 
as by man God has been dishonored, so by man 
God is now glorified. All this is done in the very 
scene in which the wickedness of man had been so 
great; so that as on the earth God had been so dis- 
honored, on earth God is now glorified. This is ac- 
complished, secondly, by making provision through 
pardon and reconciliation to gain the heart of the 
sinner, and by his spirit to subdue the love and 
dominion of sin, and set men forth on a course of 
new obedience. And in accomplishing all this he 
stirs up intelligence, which lessens the physical 
evils in our world, diminishes the virulence of 
disease, and lengthens the average life of mankind. 
The inspired writers had foretold all this, probably 
without seeing the full meaning of the language 
they employed. For from the beginning they spoke 
of seed of the woman who was to crush the head of 
the Evil One; of a seed of Abraham, in whom all 
the nations of the earth were to be blessed. And 
Paul opens to us glimpses of a yet wider reconcilia- 
tion, in which all the warring elements are to be 
embraced: “And having made peace through .the 


296 APOLOGETICS. 


blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all things to 
himself; by him, I say, whether they be things in 
earth, or things in heaven.” 

The old question is still pertinent: “ Whence hath 
this man this wisdom and these mighty works? Is 
not this the carpenter’s son? Is not his mother 
called Mary? And his brethren James, and Joses, 
and Simon, and Judas? And his sisters, are they 
not all with us? Whence, then, hath this man all 
these things?” There can be but one satisfactory 
answer: He brought them with him from heaven. 


d.€ 


THE PLANTING OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. — LEGENDARY 
AND MYTHIC THEORIES.— ACCORDANCE OF THE BOOK OF 
ACTS WITH GEOGRAPHY AND HISTORY. — COINCIDENCES 
BETWEEN ACTS AND PAUL’S EPISTLES. — PRESENT PoOst- 
TION OF CHRISTIANITY. 


ae is, let me suppose, an intelligent, well 
educated youth, — say a Hindoo of the Brah 

minical caste, — with no prepossession for or against 
Christianity, but anxious to know whether it has the 
sanction of God. He knows what it is now as 
exhibited in the Books of the Bible, and the beliefs 
and lives of Christians; but he wishes to ascertain 
what is its origin, —from earth or from heaven: For 
this purpose he goes back to a point when there is 
no dispute about its being in existence, .about its 
being firmly rooted and having become a power in 
the world. He takes his stand at the beginning of 
the second century, or.about seventy, or between that 
and one hundred years after the death of Christ. He 
searches the history of the times, and finds a number 
of points established by evidence, which can be set 
aside only on principles that would undermine all 
history. First, he finds that Christianity was then 
widely spread, had numerous adherents in the prin- 
cipal Greek cities, in Rome, and in nearly every 


heh 


298 APOLOGETICS. 


province of the Roman Empire; and that the mem 
bers exhibited certain marked characters, in par- 
ticular holding firmly by their convictions, and 
submitting in consequence to the bitterest persecu- 
tions. He will find, too, that they claimed Jesus as 
the founder of their faith, and that it was allowed by 
all that this Jesus was crucified at Jerusalem when 
Tiberius was Emperor of Rome and Pontius Pilate 
was governor of Judea. Tacitus writing about seventy 
years after the crucifixion, and speaking of the fire 
which consumed a large portion of the city of Rome 
in the reign of Nero, — that is, a little more than thirty 
years after our Lord’s death, — tells us that, in order 
to do away with the imputation under which he lay 
of ordering the city to be set on fire, he threw the 
blame on the Christians. “To put an end to the 
report, he laid the guilt, and inflicted the most cruel 
punishinents, upon a set of people who were abhorred 
for their crimes, and called Christians by the people. 
The founder of that name was Christ, who suffered 
death in the reign of Tiberius, under his procurator, 
Pontius Pilate. This hurtful superstition, thus 
checked for a time, broke out again, and spread 
not only over Judea, where the evil originated, but 
through Rome also, to which every thing bad finds 
its way, and in which it is practised.. Some who 
confessed that they belonged to the sect were first 
seized; and afterwards, on their information, a vast 
multitude were apprehended and convicted, not so 
much of the crime of burning Rome as of hatred to 
mankind. Their sufferings at their execution were 


LARLY SPREAD OF THE GOSPEL. 299 


aggravated by insult and mockery; for some were 
disguised in the skins of wild beasts and worried to 
death by dogs, some were crucified, others were 
wrapt in pitch and set on fire when the day closed, 
that they might serve to illumine the night. Nero 
lent his gardens for these exhibitions, and exhibited 
at the same time a mock Circensian entertainment, 
and was a spectator of the whole in the dress of a 
charioteer, sometimes mirgling with the crowd on 
foot, and sometimes viewing the spectacle from his 
car. ‘This conduct made the sufferers pitied; and 
though they were criminals, and deserving the 
severest punishment, yet they were regarded as 
sacrificed, not for the public good, but to gratify the 
cruelty of one man.” Suetonius, who lived at the 
same time with Tacitus, refers to them in the same 
way: “The Christians, a set of men of a new and 
evil superstition, were punished.” But the most 
remarkable testimony in their behalf is given by 
Pliny the Younger, a very thoughtful and elegant 
_ writer, in what may be regarded as an official letter 
to ‘Trajan, his master, the emperor. In the year 
A.D. I12 he is governor of Pontus and Bithynia, and 
he thus writes of the Christians, that they were 
“many of every age, and of both sexes. Nor has the 
contagion prevailed among cities only, but among 
villages and country districts.” He tells us that 
“accusations, trials, examinations, were and had 
been going on against them in the provinces over 
which he presided; that schedules were delivered 
by anonymous informers, containing the names of 


300 APOLOGETICS. 


persons who were suspected of holding or favoring 
the religion; that in consequence of these informa- 
tions many had been apprehended, of whom some 
boldly avowed their profession and died in the 
cause.” About the same time contemptuous allu- 
sions were made to their sufferings and their forti- 
tude or obstinate attachment to their belief by the 
popular satirists, Juvenal and Martial, and at a 
somewhat later date by the philosophic Marcus 
Aurelius.* 

These are testimonies by heathen writers, who lived 
altogether out of the circle of the new religion, who 
did not profess to understand it, and who despised it 
in their ignorance, but whose declarations prove that 
it arose at a particular time and in a particular way, 
and was extensively known by the end of the first 
century. It can be proven by indubitable evidence, 
and is admitted on all hands, that by that time the 
gospel, coming from Judea only sixty or seventy 
years before, had been preached for a witness in 
nearly every country of the wide Roman Empire, 
and in some regions beyond. It was known in the 
palace of the Czsars, and had been proclaimed to 
Greeks and barbarians, bond and free. It had at- 
tained a firm footing in the great cities, the centres of 
power and enlightenment, — in Rome, in Corinth, in 
Ephesus, in Antioch, in Alexandria. It had planted 
stations in various parts of North Africa between 
Keypt and Carthage. In the West it had a hold in 
Spain, in Gaul, and perhaps as far as Britain. In 


* Tacitus, Ann: xv. 44. Suetonius, Nero c. 16. Juvenal, 
pat. 1. 158; 


LARLY WRITINGS. 301 


the East it was known in Arabia, in Parthia, some 
think as far as India. It had defied the edicts of 
emperors, stood firm amidst the tumults of the 
people, and come forth purified by the fires of per- 
secution. Everywhere it had exerted a moral influ- 
ence, so that a learned apologist, writing a little 
later, could say: “We, who formerly delighted in 
vicious excesses, are now temperate and chaste ; we, 
who once practised magical arts, have consecrated 
ourselves to the good and unbegotten ; we, who once 
prized gain above all things, give even what we 
have to the common use, and share it with such as 
are in need; we, who once hated and murdered one 
another, who, on account of difference of customs, 
could have no common hearth with strangers, now, 
since the appearance of Christ, live together with 
them. We pray for our enemies; we seek to per- 
suade those who hate us without cause to live con- 
formably to the goodly precepts of Christ, that they 
may become partakers with us of the joyful hope of 
blessings from God, the Lord of all.” * 

But in addition to this we have a whole series of 
writings. We have, very much as we now have 
them, the Four Gospels, with the connected history 
of the life of Jesus, of his parables and other dis- 
courses, and of his wonderful acts of love. It is 
admitted on all hands that between A.D. I50 and 
A.D. 200, the present Four Gospels were univer- 
sally acknowledged by the church as written by the 
authors whose names they bear, and as of divine 


* Justin Martyr. See Killen’s ‘‘ Ancient Church,” p. 276. 


302 APOLOGETICS. 


authority ; and that they were translated into Latin 
and Syriac. But their general acceptance at that 
time over all the scattered churches implies a long 
previous existence. The First Gospel has been uni- 
versally regarded as written by Matthew, and ad- 
dressed specially to the Hebrews. Papias, who was 
Bishop of Hierapolis, in Phrygia, the beginning of 
the second century, is quoted by Eusebius (Hist. 
Eccl. iii. 36) as referring to the Gospel by Matthew ; 
and from that date downward there is a chain of 
Witnesses in its behalf. We have like evidence in 
favor of Mark’s Gospel. Eusebius (iil. 39) quotes 
from Papias the testimony of John the Presbyter, 
that Mark, as the interpreter of Peter, gave an 
account of the deeds of Jesus. It is admitted on all 
hands that it was the same author who wrote the 
Third Gospel and the Book of Acts; and both 
must have been published long before the end of 
the first century. Attempts have been made to 
throw the composition of John’s Gospel down to 
the middle of the second century; but these have 
utterly failed. Irenzeus, who was the scholar of 
Polycarp, the disciple of John himself, ascribes the 
Gospel to John. “John, the disciple of our Lord, 
who leaned upon his bosom, did himself publish a 
Gospel while dwelling at Ephesus, in Asia” (Contra 
Her. 111.1). All this has been confirmed in our 
day by the recovery of the long-lost Philosophou- 
menon of Hippolytus, who was Bishop of Pontus in 
the first half of the third century. In this work 
Hippolytus quotes Basilides, who lived in the reign 


PAUL’S EPISTLES. 303 


, 


of Adrian, A.D. 111-138, and makes use of St. John 
and St. Luke. He quotes John i.9: “That was 
the true Light, which lighteth every man that com- 
eth into the world;” and John ii. 4, “Mine hour is 
not yet come.” 

Then we have the Epistles of Paul, I believe 
that by this time we have the whole of them known 
more or less throughout the church. It is acknowl- 
edged on all hands that we have some of them, 
and these for doctrinal and historical purposes the 
most important of any, at least thirty years before 
the close of the century. These have stood un- 
shaken all the destructive assaults of modern 
German criticism. Baur allows that the Epistle 
to the Romans, the two Epistles to the Corinth- 
lans, the Epistle to the Galatians, are genuine, 
and were written by Paul not long after the middle 
of the first century. M. Renan argues that the 
two Epistles to the Thessalonians and the Epistle to 
the Philippians are the works of the apostle, and 
that it is probable that he also wrote the Epistle to 
the Colossians, and the characteristic letter to Phil- 
emon.* I believe that the very same arguments, 
— the sameness in doctrine, in style of writing, and 
in the personal characteristics of the apostle, — 
would prove that the Epistle to the Ephesians and 
the Epistles to Timothy were written by Paul. 
There are the same deep truths underlying them all, 
the same doctrines of predestination, election, re- 
demption by blood, salvation by grace, the necessity 


* Saint Paul. Introd. 


304 3 APOLOGETICS. 


‘of regeneration, faith, and holiness, and the same 
ardor of spirit, and the same impetuosity and abrupt- 
ness of style. But it is not needful for my purpose 
to defend the whole of this ground. It is enough 
for me that the letter to the metropolis of the world, 
with its salutations to Christians there; that two 
letters to the chief commercial city of Greece; that 
letters to another Grecian city, to a Macedonian 
city, and to a scattered Celtic people in the province 
of Galatia, are allowed to have been written by Paul 
within less than an age of the death of Christ, — 
within a shorter time after the death of Christ than 
has elapsed since most of those now before me began 
to interest themselves in public events. In these 
Epistles we have all the essential truths of Christian- 
ity set forth, —the doctrines of the sinfulness of man, 
of justification by faith, of the divinity of our Lord, 
of purification by the Spirit ; we have glimpses of the 
mode of worship followed by the early Christians, of 
their churches “in the house,” of their prayers, and 
the observance of the Lord’s Supper; of the diffi 
culties which the Gentiles experienced in eating 
things offered to idols, and which the Jews felt ‘n 
reconciling their reverence for the law with their 
devotion to the gospel; we have notices of the dis- 
putes that were springing up, of the predictions of 
a coming apostasy; while we have everywhere 
moral precepts, pure as the atmosphere of heaven, 
and suited to the life we have to lead on earth: as 
Rom. xii. 1: “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by 
the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a 


BOOK OF ACTS. 305 


living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is 
your reasonable service. And be not conformed to 
this world; but be ye transformed by the renewing 
of your mind;” and 1 Cor. xiii. 4: “Charity suffer- 
eth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity 
vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave 
itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily 
provoked, thinketh no evil; rejoiceth not in iniquity, 
but rejoiceth in the truth; beareth all things, believ- 
eth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.” 

Besides these, we have a very important history, 
professedly by the same who wrote the Third Gos- 
pel, by one who travelled with the apostle, who 
introduces himself to us simply by changing fe o1 
they into we, when he is with Paul, as Acts xvi. 
10: “And after fe had seen the vision, immediately 
we endeavored to go into Macedonia, assuredly 
gathering, that the Lord had called us for to preach 
the gospel unto them. Therefore loosing from Troas, 
we came with a straight course to Samothracia,” 
&c.; and it has been remarked that when he uses 
the we, the narrative is always fuller and more 
minute. This Book of Acts, M. Renan shows, 
must have been published at least by the year 80 
of our Lord.* I believe it was written earlier, as, if 
it had not been written before that time, it would not 
have left Paul in his own hired house in Rome; 
but would have contained an account of the tragic 
scenes connected with Paul’s death. M. Renan 
is sure this book was written by Luke, the phy- 

* Les Apdtres, p. xxii. 


306 APOLOGETICS. 


Sician, and contains a substantially correct account 
of the life and travels of Paul, written in the true 
manner of history, in a calm, a charitable, and 
truly catholic spirit, and in accordance with the 
history of the times. 

Such is the historic phenomenon that presents 
itself at the opening of the second century: a wide- 
spread faith in Jesus, influencing the inner life and 
outward conduct, and, as is admitted by their ene- 
mies, a pure morality on the part of Christians ; 
with certain books, — four histories of the most 
remarkable man (to say the least) that ever lived; 
a number of Epistles addressed to Christians, ex- 
pounding their doctrine and revealing the inner 
springs of their life; and we have what seems prema 
facte a clear, accurate, and consistent account of 
the way in which all this was produced. Here 
there is a phenomenon to be accounted for, what 
will be acknowledged to be a very wonderful phe- 
nomenon, and avery complex phenomenon, — a new 
life appearing simultaneously in very different coun- 
tries, among Jews and Gentiles, in Rome and all its 
diverse provinces, among urban and rural popula: 
tions, among Greeks and barbarians; in and along 
with this a series of works, biographies, histories, 
expositions of doctrine and precept, all tending to 
one point. How, then, are we to account for this? 

There is one way of accounting for it; and that 
is the simple, the obvious one, that the books speak 
the truth about Jesus, about Paul and the propaga- 
tion of the gospel. Adopt this hypothesis, and we 


a 


INFIDEL HYPOTHESES. 307 


can understand the whole, — understand how the 
new life sprang up, how the faith was propagated, 
how the doctrine arose, how the precepts came to 
be so pure. In scientific investigation men form an 
hypothesis, and then inquire whether facts corre- 
spond. Newton supposed that all matter attracted 
other matter inversely according to the square of 
the distance; and the hypothesis was found to ac- 
count for the whole movements of the heavenly 
bodies, which all became verifications of what New- 
ton supposed to be the law of the solar system. 
Adopt the hypothesis that Jesus was what he is 
represented, and the whole of the books and the 
history becomes a verification. 

Any other theory that may be propounded can 
be shown to be utterly insufficient to explain the 
phenomenon, to be inconsistent with the body of 
facts taken as a whole. Let us look at some of 
these suppositions. 

First, the whole’ is a contrivance, an organized 
deceit, a cunningly devised fable of designing men. 
Strange as it may sound, this is the conclusion to 
which some of the later German infidels have been 
obliged to come, as finding that all other supposi- 
tions, the legendary and the mythic, cannot stand a 
sifting examination. Some persons known, — say 
Peter and John, followed by Paul, — or some persons 
unknown because kept out of sight, deliberately 
planned a false system and palmed it upon the 
world. ‘This will be the conclusion to which men 
will have to come in the end in regard to Mor- 


308 APOLOGETICS. 


monism}; and this is in fact the last resort to which 
infidels have been obliged to betake themselves in 
regard to Christianity, because every other supposi- 
tion has failed. Even Strauss, though leaning mainly 
on a vague mythical hypothesis, is obliged to say : * 
“The narratives of the Fourth Gospel, especially, 
are for the most part so methodically framed, so 
carried out into detail, that, if they are not histor- 
ical, they can apparently only be considered as 
conscious and intentional fictions.” And yet how 
monstrous the supposition! Scheming men, I 
admit, have studiously started plans of deceit to 
gratify their pride or lust or ambition, and have 
obstinately stood by them when opposed. But what 
motives could any man have to invent a religion 
like that of Jesus, which requires us to take up 
our cross, if we would follow him? But I stand 
on yet firmer ground, when I maintain that it 
could not have entered into the heart of any man 
to conceive a life and a morality like that of 
Jesus; to picture one of so pure an aim, and to 
put into his mouth the Sermon on the Mount or the 
parable of the prodigal son. The great body of 
sceptics have resorted to more ingenious and plausi- 
ble suppositions. 

It was at one time maintained that the whole 
phenomenon originated in Legends. There was a 
foundation of fact it was allowed: there was one 
named Jesus who exercised a mighty power, first 
in the obscure province of Galilee, and next in 


* New Life of Jesus, p. 208. 





LEGENDARY HYPOTHESIS. 309 


Judea; and then there gathered around him a host 
of stories, which increased as they spread, till now 
no critic is able to determine what nucleus of truth 
there may have been in the comet to lead on the neb- 
ulous accompanying matter. Now I at once admit 
that such legends are found in all countries, and that 
they might have appeared in the Christian Church ; 
in fact they did rise to a most injurious excess in 
the Middle Ages, and have been incorporated into 
its faith by the Romish Church. But then such 
legends have certain marks, and can easily be 
detected. ‘They are commonly wavering and 
uncertain, and assume different forms in different 
districts of country and in different ages. The 
popular legends of all nations have been full of 
glaring inconsistencies, — inconsistencies in respect 
of time, locality, and incident, and of the represen- 
tation of character, and the embodiment of ethical 
precept or religious dogma. Who shall be so bold 
as to attempt to bring any thing like unity out of 
the legends of the Indians in this country; or of 
King Arthur in ancient Britain; or of the Argo- 
nautic expedition, the hunting of the boar of Caly- 
don, the siege of Thebes, or the siege of Troy, in 
ancient Greece? If we have these fables related 
by only one writer, there may be something like a 
connected narrative; but when they are given us 
by various narrators, the contradictions become 
glaring beyond the possibility of even an attempted 
reconciliation. Now the New Testament bears on 
the very face of it that itis the work of a number 


310 APOLOGETICS. 


+. 


of writers placed in different circumstances, and 
with different natural tastes, temperaments, and 
styles of composition; and yet in their writings we 
have a most wonderful unity, and this in the sub- 
jects about which the popular mind is most apt to 
be confused,— a unity in the ethical system, in the 
graces of the Christian character, for example; a 
unity in the grand religious doctrines, as in the view 
given of the Word becoming flesh, and of sin and 
salvation; and, above all, a unity in the character of 
Jesus, who is placed in a great variety of positions, 
and yet is everywhere one and the same. The wisest 
opponents of Christianity have come to see this, and 
have abandoned the Legendary hypothesis as one 
utterly inapplicable to such connected discourses as 
the parables of our Lord, and such well-reasoned 
compositions as those of the Apostle Paul. 

But another theory has been devised and elabo 
rated with imposing skill and learning, and has 
deceived not a few scholars ignorant of the world, 
though it is not likely to tell with men of good sense, 
who have had much acquaintance with the motives 
which sway mankind. It is what is called the 
Mythic Theory. It is shown that most nations which 
have risen above barbarism have been in the way of 
fashioning myths. ‘These differ in many respects 
from legends. ‘The legend has always a foundation 
in fact, to which, however, additions have been made 
in the shape of new, commonly lively incidents 
likely to strike the popular fancy, and, as being easily 
remembered, to go down by tradition to future ages. 





| 
: 


MITC HIPOTRESIS. Sir 


Myths may, or quite as likely may not, have a 
foundation of fact. They originate in some popular 
idea or belief, which has somehow or other come to 
be very generally entertained ; and they are devised 
to account for it, to justify it, in one word, to sat- 
isfyit. A tribe has grown up with certain predi- 
lections, perhaps with a strong vanity in a certain 
direction, possibly with a very determined ambition 
to secure certain coveted possessions. ‘To justify all 
this, a story is devised as to some incident sup- 
posed to have occurred at the formation of the 
tribe: or as to the father of their race, and some 
feat which he performed, or some promise or bless- 
ing or inheritance which he left them. The story 
at once seizes the popular mind: it so fits into 
the prevalent prepossession and belief, that it is 
generally accepted. It needs no evidence: it 
recommends itself, and passes current from mouth 
to mouth, and at last may become embodied in 
verse. German scholars have busily employed 
themselves in showing how these myths arise; in 
tracing them in their earliest shape, and following 
them down to their latest forms: have shown how 
they have been handed down from one generation 
to another, and under what modifications they have 
migrated from country to country, and gone out 
from the mother country with a colony to a distant 
region. As might have been expected, there has 
been an attempt made to apply this Mythic Theory 
to explain the rise of the gospel faith and the books 
of the New Testament. But the attempt, while it has 


312 APOLOGETICS. 


taken with some who have spent most of their time 
in their libraries, is now seen by all men of common 
sense, who know mankind, to be quite as great a 
failure as that founded on the Legendary Theory. 
Give us an idea of any kind widely entertained, and 
it will very likely generate a myth to vindicate it. 
Let a people believe that they have a right to a cer- 
tain stream, temple, or country, or pre-eminence 
among the nations, and there will be a story to 
justify it all. With a deep conviction in the truth 
of Christianity, the medizvals invented and cher- 
ished many silly, but also some beautiful tales of the 
saints. If we could conceive of the rise of Christian 
faith in the first century by natural means, we could 
conceive that there might be myths in the second cen- 
tury. According to the Mythical Theory, a religious 
consciousness of a peculiar character appeared in 
the first century, beginning at Judea; and by the 
opening of the second century it had reached every 
province of the Roman world. This gave rise to 
myths; and these myths committed to writing are 
the Four Gospels, the Book of Acts, and some say 
the Epistles of Paul. 

Now, upon this I would remark, in the first place, 
that the most difficult part of the complicated phe- 
nomenon is not explained by this hypothesis; on 
the contrary, itis assumed. Whence this religious 
consciousness, this new life so different from any 
thing that had appeared before, or that has appeared 
since, — except, indeed, what has been produced 
indirectly by Christianity? Whence this morality so 


THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS. 313 


self-sacrificing, so pure, so tender? Whence this 
conception of Jesus, — evidently the foundation of 
the whole, — of his work, his character, his aims? 

he Jewish mind, so narrow and so sectarian, was 
utterly incapable of such enlargement; the subtle 
and sensuous Greek was not susceptible of such 
simplicity, of such spirituality; and the dreamy 
Orientalist could not have imparted such definiteness 
and practical adaptedness to the doctrines and 
the precepts. The first thing to be explained is 
this consciousness, not, be it remarked, of one 
mind, but of multitudes embracing Christianity, in 
countries widely separated from each other, and 
gathered out of all grades of society. But, suppos- 
ing the feeling to have been gendered, the second 
difficulty is to show how it could produce not myths, 
but such myths,--— the sayings of our Lord, his dis- 
courses, his parables, his acts in entire conformity 
with them; the history of the travels of Paul, and 
the Epistles attributed to him. ‘There is nothing 
parallel to this in the history of the world. They 
tell us that the founder of Buddhism was a sincere 
man, impressed with the grossness of the Brahmin- 
ical system, and that he earnestly labored to effect 
a reformation, and raised up a body of followers 
who submitted to sufferings as great as the early 
Christians. Be it so, that the man was seized with 
a desire to remove evil, and that his comparatively 
pure but inane system kindled an enthusiasm in 
himself and his followers, we want entirely the 
other elements which we have in the early church: 

14 


314 APOLOGETICS. 


we have no books like the Gospels, no narrative 
geographically and historically correct like the Book 
of Acts, no ratiocinations and spiritual appeals like 
those of Paul. 

The Mythic Theory is thus seen to be utterly in- 
adequate to explain the phenomenon. ‘That theory 
is that an idea gave rise to a story. But the first 
difficulty is to get such an idea without the story. 
And the second is to get such a story, so connected, 
so consistent, out of a floating idea. And the advo- 
cates of the theory are not to be allowed to perpe- 
trate the palpable “reasoning in a circle,” involved 
in first creating the idea in order to get the story, 
and then using the story to get the idea. Jam now 
to call attention to a series of facts and considera- 
tions utterly inconsistent both with the Legendary 
and Mythic theories. 

(1) Zhere ts a conformity between these early 
books and the geography of the countries. ‘This 
is a very satisfactory point. Legends and myths 
pay little or no regard to topographical accuracy. 
There may be a general reference to some well- 
known mountain, or river, or fountain, or town, to 
give verisimilitude to the narrative, but this was 
reckoned enough in ages when there was no criti- 
cism to dispute the popular belief; and as to details, 
the inventors were not at the trouble to make their 
story correspond to the actual state of things. 
Scholars have given us geographies according to 
Homer, geographies according to the tale of the 
Argonautic expedition; but they do not attempt to 


GEOGRAPHICAL ACCORDANCE. 315 


make these agree with the position of sea and land. 
Some have been at great pains to discover the places 
mentioned in the legends of King Arthur, but have 
found the work hopeless: there are half a dozen 
places from the south of England on to the middle of 
Scotland which claim to be the burial-place of Ar- 
thur’s queen. He would be a bold man who should 
attempt to sketch the geography of the travels of 
Hiawatha. But every place visited by our Lord in 
his tours can be pointed out. Some years ago the 
little town of Ephraim was discovered by Robinson, 
and settled a number of difficult points; and now it 
is thought that we can fix on the precise spot where 
Capernaum stood, which is identified by certain fish 
still found in a well, and mentioned as being there 
by Josephus. 

Then we have all seen maps of the travels of St. 
Paul in strict accordance with the geography of the 
countries, and also with the narrative of Luke, and 
the occasional allusions in St. Paul’s Epistles. Let 
us use as a guide-book that able and most accurate 
work, Conybeare and Howson’s St. Paul, and it 
will enable us to follow the apostle from city to 
city, from: country to country, over land and sea, 
from the time he enters on his first missionary tour 
at Antioch in A.D. 48, till he arrives as a prisoner in 
Rome, in A.D. 61. The unchanging state of things 
in the East, the sameness of the roads and routes 
from the earliest date down to the present time, the 
existence of the old cities, —it may be in a decaying 
state, or in ruins, — enable us under such a guide to 


316 APOLOGETICS. 


follow Paul, with the fullest assurance that we are 
treading in his footsteps; and we see that every 
thing confirms the history of Luke and the allusions 
in the Epistles. Curious coincidences are ever 
casting up to verify the whole narrative. At Perga 
in Pamphylia, John Mark left Paul and Barna- 
bas, not being willing to engage in the work; and 
no wonder, for Paul and Barnabas as we learn, not 
from the Acts but otherwise, were about to enter on 
a very difficult and dangerous journey through a 
wild mountain‘ country with bold precipices and deep 
ravines, and infested by robbers and wild marauders, 
who kept the peaceful inhabitants in a state of terror 
and often prevented powerful armies from passing 
through the region. At Lystra the people proposed 
to offer sacrifice to Barnabas and Paul, supposing 
them to have been Jupiter and Mercury; and we 
know from other quarters that this region was 
inhabited by an ignorant and superstitious people, 
who had a tradition among them that these two 
gods had appeared to their forefathers in human 
form. | 

We can easily conceive that a legend or a myth 
might have arisen about Paul journeying to Rome 
and suffering shipwreck. ‘The persons who invented 
or propagated it would, however, be at no pains to 
seek after a minute accuracy. But the whole ac- 
count given in Acts is minutely accordant with the 
mode of travelling at that time, with the routes 
usually pursued, and with the direction of the winds 
at the season. The centurion takes a passage ina 


PAUL'S: SHIPWRECK. Sif 


merchant vessel bound for Adramyttum, and this 
vessel touches at Myra, a seaport in Lycia. There 
the centurion found a ship which suited his purpose: 
it was a ship of Alexandria, bound for Italy, being 
evidently a corn ship carrying provisions to the 
crowded population in the centre of the Roman 
Empire. Some years ago Mr. Smith of Jordan 
Hill, a gentleman well acquainted with nautical 
affairs, set out in a vessel of his own to verify the 
account given by Luke; and he found it to corre- 
spond in every particular with the prevailing winds 
and currents, and with the geography of the Isle of 
Malta. Referring to Mr. Smith’s book as giving 
particular details, I must confine myself to the ac- 
count which he gives of the wreck thus summarized 
by Dr. Howson: In the first place, we are told that 
they became aware of land by the presence of 
breakers, and yet without striking ; and at this point 
it is certain from the structure of the strand that 
there must have been violent breakers that night, 
with a north-easterly wind. At this day the sound- 
ings as taken by Mr. Smith were found to be twenty 
fathoms, and a little farther on fifteen fathoms. It 
may be said that this in itself is nothing remarkable. 
But if we add that the fifteen fathoms’ depth is the 
direction of the vessel’s drift W. by N. from the 
twenty fathoms’ depth, the coincidence is startling. 
Again, the character of the coast on the farther side 
of the bay is such that, though the greater part of it 
is fronted with rocky precipices, there are one or 
two indentations which exhibit the appearance of a 


318 APOLOGETICS. 


creek, with a shore described as a sandy or pebbly 
shore. This spot as seen from the vessel would 
appear like a place between two seas, and into it 
they ran. Finally, referring to the fact of the 
anchors holding during that terrible night, we find 
in the English Official Sailing Directions that the 
ground in St. Paul’s Bay is so good that, while the 
cables hold, there is no danger, as the anchors will 
never start. All these facts seem to prove that this 
Melita must be the modern Malta, and that the nar- 
rative of Luke is in every respect and circumstan- 
tially correct. 

(2) There ts an accordance between the state 
of society and the history of the period on the one 
hand, and the Book of Acts and the Epistles 
of Paul upon the other. ‘There is no historical 
work of ancient times which gives us so clear and 
faithful a picture of the condition of the world at 
the time as the Book of Acts; and it is all in 
congruity with the accounts given otherwise. First, 
the Jews are brought under our view: both those 
who were settled in Jerusalem, living on their past 
glory, and expecting a future earthly grandeur, 
which was never to be realized by them; and then 
those who were scattered throughout the Greek 
cities, Carrying on various branches of industry 
with tenacity and perseverance, but utterly sepa- 
rated, socially and religiously, from the people 
among whom they sojourned — as they thought only 
temporarily, and cherishing the idea of returning 
to their land-to share in its coming glories. All 


GREEK-SPEAKING PEOPLE. 319 


of them are discontented with the condition in 
which they find themselves, and are looking for a 
Messiah to bring in a better state of things, but 
with very different ideas and expectations as to 
what the character of this Deliverer should be, — 
some, indeed, expecting such a one as the prophets 
described to work a moral reformation, but the 
great body of them longing for a mere temporal 
prince, or more commonly expecting the Messiah 
to confirm and consolidate their hard, formal, 
and self-righteous system of religious beliefs and 
services. And so we see a number of them 
expecting Jesus, and waiting anxiously for him; 
while the people as a whole crucified Christ, and 
persecuted his followers in the vain thought that 
they would crush the new evangelical faith on the 
instant and for ever. 

Then we have a picture of the Greek-speaking 
population in the great cities, as in Antioch, 
in Paphos, in Ephesus, Athens, and Corinth. 
In these we see what the Greek civilization, 
spread by the conquests of Alexander the Great, 
could accomplish. ‘The great body of the people 
are degraded, with no attempt made by philoso- 
phers or scholars to elevate them: philosophers 
are spending their intellectual power in sophistic 
subtleties; the upper classes have a sensuous, and 
ome of them a literary, refinement, but as a whole 
they give themselves up to pleasures, to games 
and theatres, and worse indulgences, — paiderastia 
and association with hetairai being practised with- 


320 APOLOGETICS. 


out shame and without remorse. Such a people 
were not fit to resist the advancing power of the 
Romans, in fact fell under their dominion more 
easily than the Carthaginians, the Germans, the 
Gauls, or the Britons did. This Greek people, 
living in barbarous countries, had no public or 
patriotic purpose to live for: they felt that it was 
of no use resisting the Roman dominion, and in 
fact had no inclination to make the effort. Their 
old religion had very much lost its hold upon them, 
and they knew of no better; and having no high aim 
before them, either for this life or the life to come, 
they thought that there was nothing for them but to 
seek and obtain as many of the enjoyments of this 
world as possible. “Let us eat and drink, for: 
to-morrow we die.” A people so situated and so 
acting must, like the leaves of autumn, so different 
from the leaves supported by fresh sap in spring, 
fade and rot and disappear, as in fact all their 
once famous cities did; so that itis difficult, as to 
some of them, to find the places where they once 
were. 

Then we have the Romans establishing a strong 
government, allowing no one to speak or act 
against the authority of Cesar or the Roman 
people, insisting everywhere on obedience and 
order, arresting lawlessness wherever it appeared, 
and furnishing facilities for travelling, and thus 
allowing commerce and knowledge to spread with 
their civilizing influences; but, we have to add, 
seeking in no way to improve or to encourage free- 


THE ROMANS. 321 


dom and independence, or the morals or religion 
of the people. The upper classes in Rome were 
losing the stern virtues of their fathers, and acquir- 
ing the levities of the Greeks without their refine- 
ment. In the Herods, — grandfather, fathers, and 
children, — and in Pontius Pilate, and Festus, and 
Felix, we have a pictuie of the sort of men sent 
out by the emperors to rule the provinces; and 
there was nothing in the character of the soldiery 
in a garrison city to improve the morals or refine 
the manners of the citizens. We perceive the 
upper classes, both Greeks and Romans, losing 
their faith in the old superstitions of their nations ; 
and, in their anxiety to have something deeper and 
better to rest on, betaking themselves to soothsayers 
and astrologers, who deceived them by pretending 
to convey supernatural communications, and by 
the lying wonders which they wrought. 

- Then we have a picture of the great mass of the 
people, rude and ignorant, with no systematic at- 
tempts to educate or to elevate them, dividing their 
time between servile work and debasing pleas- 
ures, believing in their gross hereditary supersti- 
tions, and irritated at all who would disturb them 
in their beliefs or in their practices; but some 
of them maintaining an earnestness of belief, an 
honest industry, and love of independence, such 
as had very much disappeared among the upper 
classes. 

Now in this book, as well as in general history, 


we find all these elements, Eastern and Western, 
14* 


322 APOLOGETICS. 


meeting, mingling, seething, fermenting. We see, 
too, a new chemical power thrown into this cal- 
dron, meeting with opposition from all, but con- 
tending with all, and in a sense conquering them 
by making them take new forms and dispositions, 
the result of which is the formation of a soil consti- 
tuting modern society. For has not the modern 
European and American world been produced by 
these four or five causes: first, the Greeks giving 
refinement; second, the Romans contributing gov- 
ernment and order; third, the Hebrews spreading 
a pure religion; with a popular element derived 
from those energetic nations which emigrated from 
Asia, bringing with them their superstitions, but also — 
their love of independence; and finally Christianity 
working in the midst of them, and seeking to subor- 
dinate and sanctify them all, as yet with only partial 
success, but with such a measure of success as to 
insure a final triumph? We are here at the point, 
or rather the time, where the Eastern and Western 
worlds meet, where the ancient world has reached 
its limit, and the modern world begins. It is surely 
interesting, and may be instructive, to stand at such 
a place, which we are enabled to do by the simple, 
truth-like narrative of Luke, to discover all these 
agencies at work, to see the old leaves fallen or 
falling and putrefying, but dropping in the midst of 
them a set of undying seeds to germinate into a 
new and better life. 

The instances of correspondence between the 
Book of Acts and general history might be multi- 


SPECIAL COINCIDENCES. 323 


plied indefinitely. Thus, it is in Athens that Paul 
is met by the Stoics and Epicureans, who strenu- 
ously oppose him, as we might expect from the 
self-righteous character of the one sect, and the 
pleasure-loving character of the other. It is in 
Corinth, known as a licentious, commercial city, that 
impurity breaks forth in the church; and it is in 
writing to the Christians in that place, so famous 
for its architecture, that he draws his imagery from 
the art of building. It is among the Galatians, a 
Celtic people with all the impulses of their race, 
that we find so rapid a change in public sentiment, 
so that, while at first they would have plucked out 
their own eyes for the good of the apostle (who 
seems to have been troubled with a weakness of 
sight), afterwards they turned away from the sim- 
plicity of the gospel. The Roman magistrates are 
represented now as shielding the apostle, and again 
as subjecting him to penalties, according as they 
believe that the cause of order will thereby be sus- 
tained. ‘The persons who handed down legends or 
invented myths never troubled themselves to secure 
such consistencies. But, besides these general cor- 
respondences, there are minute coincidences of a 
still more remarkable character. We can refer 
only to two. 

In his first missionary tour, Paul comes to the 
town of Paphos, in the Isle of Cyprus. The title 
given to the Governor by Luke agrees most thor- 
oughly with what we learn from heathen authority. 
The Romans sent two kinds of governors to their 


324 APOLOGETICS. 


provinces. One set of provinces was under the 
senate and people, and the governor of these was 
appointed by lot: he carried with him the lictor and 
fasces, and he is styled proconsul, in Greek avOumutog ; 
he had no military power, ahd he had to resign at 
the end of the year. Another set of provinces was 
under the emperor, and the governor was called 
propretor or artoteatyyos, or legatus, mesoBevtys: he 
goes with the authority of the emperor, he has full 
military power, and he remains during the pleasure 
of the emperor. Now Luke mentions both these 
kinds- of officers, uses the names of both, and he 
always applies them right; that is, gives to a prov- 
ince the very officer which we find that it had from 
heathen authority. In our version, he is called sim- 
ply a deputy; in the original it is ev@umetoy. Now 
Dio Cassius informs us in one passage that the 
emperor retained Cyprus as a province of his own, 
in which case the title of the governor should not 
have been proconsul, but propretor. But the same 
historian adds that Augustus restored Cyprus to the 
senate, thus making the governor proconsul. This 
is confirmed by a coin found in Curium, in Cyprus, 
of the date A.D. 52, a few years after the visit of 
Paul, containing an allusion to Claudius Ceesar as 
_ emperor, and representing the governor of the Isle 
of Cyprus as a proconsul. So minutely accurate 
is the statement of Luke as shown by these inci- 
dental notices which learned research has brought 
to light. 

In his second missionary tour Paul comes to Phil- 


SPECIAL COINCIDENCES. 325 


ippi, “a city of Macedonia and a colony.” Augus- 
tus, the representative of the highest grandeur of 
the Roman empire, had bestowed on this city the 
privileges of a colonza. A Roman colony planted 
in a city was a copy and a sort of representative of 
Rome itself. The original members of it went out 
from Rome, and were often veteran soldiers who 
were thus rewarded for their services. They set- 
tled in the city with the pride and all the feelings 
of Romans. I believe that in the course of years 
others, not Italians, became amalgamated with them, 
and sharers in their privileges. But the laws and 
customs of Rome were there rigidly carried out: 
they had in their city the Roman insignia, and in 
the market-place the laws of the XII. Tables were 
inscribed. The language of the men of office, and 
indeed of the great body of the people, was Latin. 
The colony was regulated by its own magistrates 
named Duumviri, but delighting to call themselves 
Pretors, in Greek orgaryyo.. They kept up a direct 
dependence on Rome, and were not under the 
governor of the province. ‘The citizens had all the 
privileges of Roman citizens, such as freedom from 
arrest, and a right of appeal to the emperor. Such 
was the city, partly Greek in its people, but event- 
ually Roman in its government, in which Paul now 
found himself. The treatment which Paul receives 
in this city is altogether in accordance. He and 
Silas were dragged into the éyogay, or Forum, ar- 
raigned before the city authorities, éeyortes. The case 
came Officially before the stgetyyo, the usual trans- 


326 APOLOGETICS. 


lation of the Roman pretors. The charge was 
plausibly put: “ These men, being Jews, do exceed- 
ingly trouble our city, and teach customs which are 
not lawful for us to receive, neither to observe, 
being Romans.” It was the ancient law and custom 
of the Romans to admit no foreign religion. The 
pretors gave the Roman order: “Go, lictors, strip 
off their garments: let them be scourged.7 lite 
horrid sentence being executed, they thrust them 
into the inner prison. But in their passion and hurry 
they had been guilty of an informality. Paul was 
a Roman citizen, and they had condemned him 
without a trial. Afraid of being punished them- 
selves, they gave orders on the following morning 
for the liberation of the prisoners. 

(3) Zhere are a great many undesigned coinci- 
dences between the Book of Acts on the one hand, 
and the Epistles of Paul on the other. By observ- 
ing these, we get a most satisfactory evidence of the 
authenticity and truthfulness of both, and indeed 
of the truth of Christianity. This isthe point which 
has been taken up by Paley, in the most original 
of his works, the “Hore Pauline.” He puts the 
supposition that the two, the fourteen letters and the 
history, were found for the first time in the Escurial, 
or some other library, without any collateral evi- 
dence in their favor; and he shows that, from a 
comparison of the two, we could reach the convic- 
tion that the letters are authentic, the narrative in 
the main true, and the persons and transactions real. 
As a specimen, we may notice the correspondence 


SPECIAL COINCIDENCES. 327 


between Acts xvii. and xviii. on the one hand, and 
the two Epistles to the Thessalonians on the other. 
The history tells us that Paul, before coming to 
Thessalonica, had been at Philippi, where he was 
scourged and put in prison (Acts xvi-). In writ- 
ing to the Thessalonians, Paul says (1 Thess. 11. 2), 
* After that we had suffered before, and were shame- 
fully entreated, as ye know, at Philippi.” The his- 
tory tells us that when Paul came to Thessalonica 
(Acts xvii. 5), “the Jews, which believed not, took 
unto them certain lewd fellows of the baser sort, and 
gathered a company, and set all the city in an up- 
roar.” Paul says (1 Thess. 11. 2): “ We were bold 
in our God to speak unto you the gospel of God 
with much contention;” and (ill. 7) he speaks of 
“our affliction and distress.” The history says that 
when Paul left Berea, he left behind him Silas and 
Timotheus; and that, when he came to Athens, 
he sent back a message (Acts xvii. 15) that they 
should “come to him with all speed;” and that, as 
he was waiting for them, his spirit was stirred 
within him, when he saw the city given to the 
worship of idols. Paul (1 Thess. il. 1) speaks 
affectingly of his being left in Athens alone, without 
his usual associates in labor, -and with no one to 
support him. The history implies that, on Paul 
coming to Corinth, Silas and Timotheus were not 
with him; and that, seeking for congenial fellowship, 
he joined himself to Aquila and Priscilla; and he 
tells us that after a time Silas and Timotheus came 
to him (Acts xviii. 5) : “And when Silas and Timo- 


328 APOLOGETICS. 


theus were come from Macedonia.” Paul refers 
(1 Thess. ii. 5) to his being so anxious before 
Timothy arrived to learn the state of the Thessalo- 
nians: “For this cause, when I could no longer for- 
bear, I sent to know your faith, lest by some means 
the tempter have tempted you, and our labor be in 
vain. But now, when Timotheus came from you 
unto us, and brought us good tidings of your faith 
and charity, and that ye have good remembrance of 
us always, desiring greatly to see us, as we also to 
see you.” We find Timothy and Silvanus, who have 
now arrived in Corinth, joining with Paul in writing 
the Epistle (1 Thess. i.). The history tells us that, 
so,far as Greece was concerned, Paul was most suc- 
cessful in Macedonia and Achaia, and details the 
cities in which his work was in these countries. 
The letter-writer says (1 Thess. 1. 7, 8), “ Ye were 
ensamples to all that believe in Macedonia and 
Achaia. For from you sounded out the word of 
the Lord, not only in Macedonia and Achaia,” &c. 

But it may be urged that all this might have been 
done by a forger; that the history might have been 
written by. one who had seen the Epistles, or the 
Epistles by one who had seen the Book of Acts. 
To this there is a twofold reply. One is, that the 
coincidences come out incidentally, and not stu- 
diously. A forger would have made the corre- 
spondences prominent, certain to be seen by all; 
whereas, it is clear that neither the historian nor 
letter-writer is seeking to establish his veracity ; and 
we discover that the one fits into the other, only by 


SPECIAL COINCIDENCES. 329 


collating passages scattered in various places, which 
passages are all natural in the places in which they 
are found. Secondly, while we have samenesses, 
we have also differences between the two, — differ- 
ences on the surface, and which would never have 
been allowed to remain by a forger. Thus Paul 
tells us how he was sustained when he was in 
Thessalonica (1 Thess. 11. 9), “For ye remember, 
brethren, our labor and travail: for laboring night 
and day, because we would not be chargeable unto 
any of you.” And in another Epistle (Phil. iv. 16) 
he tells us that he got a gift from the Philippians, 
which, no doubt, helped him in his first residence at 
Thessalonica. “For even in Thessalonica ye sent 
once and again unto my necessity.” No mention 
is made of this in the history; and yet this is the 
very thing which a forger would most likely have 
fixed to show a forced correspondence. And even 
at this point there is a general agreement, for 
the historian tells us (Acts xviii. 3) that Paul did 
thus labor with his hands at Corinth. And there is 
a more important difference, amounting at first sight 
to a discrepancy, but turning out in the end to be a 
corroboration. Looking to the First Epistle to the 
Thessalonians, it might seem as if Timothy had 
joined Paul at Athens (1 Thess. iii, 1): “ Where- 
fore, when we could no longer forbear, we thought 
it good to be left at Athens alone; and sent ‘Timo- 
theus, our brother, and minister of God, and our 
fellow-laborer in the gospel of Christ, to establish 
you, and to comfort you concerning your faith.” 


330 APOLOGETICS. 


From this it seems pretty clear that, while Paul was 
at Athens, Timothy had left Berea, and come to 
him; and that, anxious about the Thessalonians, he 
had sent him back to Thessalonica, with a message 
of comfort to the persecuted and distracted Chris- 
tians there. It was after fulfilling this mission that 
he and Silas joined Paul at Corinth. There is no 
notice of this in the Book of Acts, which there would 
certainly have been, if a forger had drawn the his- 
tory out of the Epistles, with the view of exhibiting 
an ostentatious consistency. Still the statement in 
the Epistles does not contradict the history. For 
the history makes Paul urgently press Timothy to 
come to Athens; and Paul, who does. not seem to 
have been driven from Athens, remains there till 
Timothy arrives, and then sends him to Thessa- 
lonica, with instructions, no doubt, to join him at 
Corinth, and bring him a true account of the state 
of the church at Thessalonica. ‘The two accounts 
are thus perfectly consistent; but it is not a labored 
consistency, but a congruity arising from both being 
genuine and truthful. We might multiply such 
cases, but it is unnecessary when they are found 
in so accessible a book as the “ Hore Pauline.” 


Let us view Christianity in its place in the world. 
The intelligent Hindoo may very reasonably put the 
question, Has it accomplished what it professes, has 
it fulfilled its mission? It may be allowed that 
some of the early Christians expected Jesus and his 
religion to make an easy conquest of the world. 


CHRISTIANITY AT PRESENT. aan 


But the actual history of the church is in entire 
accordance with the picture presented by our Lord 
by his inspired apostles. Luke xii. 49: “I am come 
to send fire on the earth.” —“ Suppose ye that I am 
come to give peace on earth? I tell you, Nay; but 
rather division. From henceforth there shall be 
five in one house divided, three against two, and two 
against three.” The same lesson is taught in several 
of the most striking of our Lord’s parables, Matt. xiii. 
24-30: “The kingdom of heaven is likened unto a 
man which sowed good seed in his field: but while 
men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among 
the wheat, and went his way. But when the blade 
was sprung up, and brought forth fruit, then appeared 
the tares also.” It is a picture of what is felt in the 
heart of the Christian, it is a picture of what is found 
in the professing church of God. When the Thessa- 
lonians misinterpreted the language of Paul’s First 
Epistle, and concluded that Christ was to come in 
triumph immediately, the apostle hastens to inform 
them (2 Thess. 11. 3) “that day shall not come, 
except there come a falling away first, and that 
man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition.”” Peter 
points to scoffers, who shall appear in the latter 
days, advancing the very objection which we find 
urged in the present day, from the constancy of 
nature (2 Pet. ili. 3-5): “Since the fathers fell 
asleep, all things continue as they: were from the 
beginning of the creation.” The last spared of the 
apostles speaks of it as being well known that Anti- 
christ was to come (1 John ii. 18) : “And as ye have 


332 APOLOGETICS. 


heard that Antichrist shall come, even now there are 
many Antichrists.” And in the Book of Revelation 
there is a prediction of an antichristian power which 
shall have extensive sway for twelve hundred and 
sixty days, a day for a year. Every Christian feels 
how truly our Lord pictures the grace of God in the 
heart, when he says (Matt. xiii. 33), “ The kingdom 
of heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman took, 
and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole 
was leavened.” Neander shows, in his “ History of 
the Church,” that this is also a picture of the church 
at large. He thus opens his great work: “The his- 
tory will show how a little leaven cast into the mass 
of humanity has been gradually penetrating it. 
Looking back on the period of eighteen centuries, we 
would survey a process of development, in which we 
ourselves are included, —a process moving steadily 
onward, though not in a direct line, but through 
various windings, yet in the end furthered by what- 
ever has attempted to arrest its course; a process 
having its issue in eternity, but constantly following 
the same laws, so that in the past, as it unfolds itself 
to our view, we may see the germ of the future 
which is coming to meet us.” We are ever inclined 
to say, “ Why is he so long in coming? Why tarry 
the wheels of his chariot?” We are made to see 
that God is not slack concerning his purpose, but 
at the same time that “ with the Lord one day is as 
a thousand years, and a thousand years as one 
day.” This is a motto which might be placed at 
the head of every chapter of the history of the geo- 


CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 333 


logical epochs: it is a truth which we must take 
along with us, if we would comprehend the solemn 
and steady march of prophecy. The whole of 
paleontology is a history of the struggle of life 
upward from lower to higher forms, the weaker 
dying out, and the stronger surviving, and prevail- 
ing, and propagating its kind. The biography of 
the individual Christian exhibits a like contest 
between the mind and the members, with the mind 
finally gaining the victory. The history of the 
church in the world is in like manner a record of 
a struggle between light and darkness, between love 
and selfishness, between purity and pollution; in 
which, notwithstanding many reverses, the higher 
principle is certain to reign in the end. Let us, 
before closing, take a passing glance at the present 
missionary work of the church. 

For long ages did the Protestant Church decline, 
like Jonah, the rebellious prophet, to engage in the 
evangelistic work allotted to it. It is only some 
seventy years since Protestants — it has to be said, 
to their disgrace — awoke to the sense and duty 
of missionary exertion. Some wonder that so little 
fruit has been gathered, are astonished that the 
whole world has not been already converted by 
the efforts made; but the proper wonder is that the 
churches were so long insensible to their responsi- 
bility, and that even yet so little has been done. 
Of late years dur religion has shown that it is as 
vigorous and fresh for contest as when it first went 
forth to subdue the world, and as much has been 


334 APOLOGETICS. 


accomplished as in the same period in the early 
church. Seventy years after the death and resur- 
rection of our Lord, and the outpouring of the 
Spirit on the day of Pentecost, bring us to the 
death of the Apostle John and the close of the first 
century. In the early part of this Lecture we had 
our attention called to what was done during that 
period: let us now compare with it what has been 
done in this century. At home an idea has been 
created, and a public sentiment been generated and 
propagated, and organizations have been formed 
for effective operation. Every congregation has 
felt the impulse to a greater or less extent, every 
Sunday school has its missionary box, and contri- 
butions come in regularly as the seasons; and from 
every part of our land young men and women 
willingly offer themselves as missionaries or 
teachers, and are ready to go to the forlorn hopes 
of the warfare, to labor in the most remote islands, 
and among the most degraded tribes ; while prayers 
rise continually from millions of people and tens 
of thousands of congregations, who give themselves 
no rest, and give God no rest, till the promise is 
fulfilled, and the knowledge of the Lord shall 
cover the earth as the waters do the channel of the 
deep. <A footing and a settlement have been 
gained in countries of which the apostles never 
heard. Rude tongues, without form and void of all 
elevated and elevating ideas, have been licked into 
shape, and rendered capable of conveying spiritual 
truth. <A literature of a high and wholesome - 


CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 335 


character has been created in nations which pre- 
viously had none. ‘The Bible, in whole or in part, 
has been translated into more than one hundred’ 
and fifty languages; millions of tracts, and hun- 
dreds of thousands of books, have been distributed. 
An extensive apparatus for work has been set up in 
mission-houses, and boarding-houses, and schools, 
and printing-presses, all radiating a healthy influ- 
ence around them. We see streaks of light on the 
mountain-tops in countries on which it cannot be 
said that the sun has yet risen. The prejudices 
of ignorance have been removed among many in 
whom the prejudices of the heart have not given 
way. Superstitions are being undermined in lands 
in which they have not yet fallen. In not a few 
places the prepossessions or the fears of the people 
are in favor of the missionaries and of the message 
which they carry. When the children of Israel 
entered the land, after forty years’ sojourn in the 
adjoining wilderness, there was a fear of them 
everywhere, which so far helped them in their con- 
quest. When the apostles went forth to proclaim 
the gospel, there was a feeling abroad among the 
nations that the old superstitions were about to 
vanish, and that a new and conquering faith was 
to come out of these regions; and this prepared 
men for listening to their message. When the 
Reformers made their attack on the Romish super- 
stitions, there was an impression that the cor- 
ruptions had become intolerable; and this removed 
obstacles out of the way as they advanced. And, 


336 APOLOGETICS. 


at this present time, there is in various countries a 
widely diffused presentiment that the gods cannot 
help themselves, and that their reign is drawing 
to a close. 

And we can refer not only to this ploughing 
and sowing, we can point to precious and sub- 
stantial fruit gathered in. The gospel has shown 
itself to be not dead or effete, as some would 
wish it, but possessed of a living power, quite 
as much as it had when it rose with Jesus from 
the tomb, or when it went forth from the upper 
chamber at Jerusalem to be baptized of the 
Spirit. In a number of lands, cannibalism and 
infanticide and human sacrifices have been sup- 
pressed for ever: In India; suttee* hasbeen 
abolished, the supporters of caste have been 
troubled, and the rights of woman asserted, and 
a beginning made in the way of elevating her. 
Idols have been thrown down as Dagon was before 
the Ark of the Covenant; and they preserve as 
trophies, in missionary museums, idols which no 
man will now worship. The gods of the land, the 
gods of the sea, the gods of the woods, the rain 
gods and the storm gods and disease gods, have 
been made to give way before the one living and 
true God, who is now seen to rule so beneficently 
over the sea and the dry land, and over all the 
powers and agencies of nature. At hundreds of 
mission stations there are Christians, many or few, 
scattered like living seeds among the people, and 
ready to propagate around them a wholesome in- 


CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 337 


fluence. These converts may not be perfect, but 
neither were those of the early church, — for ex- 
ample, those at Corinth; but they make a credible 
profession, and in honesty and purity and kindness 
and generosity set as good an example as the 
members of our churches at home. In _ parts 
of India and of Burmah there are communities 
of Christians numbering tens of thousands. In 
India there are at least one hundred thousand boys 
taught in the vernacular schools, and many others 
studying English in addition to their own tongue; 
while thirty thousand girls are receiving a Christian 
education. The planting of Christianity in Mada- 
gascar has thrilling incidents, not surpassed fo1 
the display of courage or devotedness by any 
recorded in the early church; and there is a 
reasonable prospect of the whole inhabitants 
of that large island professing their faith in 
Christianity. Mark what is reported of the South 
Sea Islands: “Sixty-five years ago there was not a 
solitary native Christian in Polynesia: now it would 
be difficult to find a professed idolater in those 
islands of Eastern or Central Polynesia where 
Christian missionaries have been established. The 
hideous rites of their forefathers have ceased to be 
practised. Their heathen legends and war songs 
are forgotten. Their cruel and desolating tribal 
wars, which were rapidly destroying the popula- 
tion, appear to be at an end. ‘They are gathered 
together in peaceful village communities. They 
live under recognized codes of laws. They are 
15 


3 38 APOLOGETICS. 


constructing roads, cultivating their fertile lands, 
and engaging in commerce. On the return of the 
Sabbath a very large proportion of the population 
attend the worship of God, and in some instances 
more than half the adult population are recognized 
members of Christian Churches. They educate 
their children, preparing them for usefulness in 
after life.” 


In summing up, let us inquire first what account 
the plain, thoughtful man would give of this world, 
after having passed through its experience. Per- 
haps he will be disposed to say, with Robert Burns, 
that “man was made to mourn;” he will certainly 
be ready to avow that the dark lines of sorrow run 
through and through the web of life. Of the four 
great verities held by Buddhism, which has had such 
extensive sway, the first two and the fundamental 
are that the world is full of dissatisfaction and sor- 
row, and that this arises from sin. Our earth is 
not what any of us would wish it to be, is not what 
good men would expect it to be. It is not a scene 
of confusion, for law is everywhere visible. It is 
not the product of chance, nor of an unknown: 
power, which may be good, or which may be evil; 
for we see traces everywhere of wise and benefi- 
cent intention. But, onthe other hand, it is not such 
a place as we believe heaven to. be. It is a state 
out of which men may be taken to heaven, but it is 
not in itself a scene of unbroken beatitude and 
unstained purity. 


WHAT SCIENCE SAYS. 339 


Let us now ask of science, of history, and travel, 
what they make of it. They tell us that they dis- 
cover in all past ages, and in all countries, traces 
of a contest. When we look up to the heavenly 
bodies moving so orderly, shining so beneficently, 
it might seem as if our world were basking in the 
light of God, as if it were a scene of beauty and 
purity like the star-lit sky when not a cloud is resting 
onit. But when we penetrate deeper, we discover 
that our Cosmos has been formed in ages past out of 
warring elements; and we seem to see at this pres- 
ent time broken-up worlds, the débris of dread cat- 
astrophes. There is evidence that suffering and 
death have been in our earth since sentient life 
appeared, and reigning over those “who had not 
sinned after the similitude of Adam’s transgres- 
sion.” The struggle in the pre-Adamite ages is 
an anticipation, perhaps a prefiguration, of the 
more terrible struggle in the post-Adamite neriod. 
In-«the time now present, history and travel dis- 
close ignorance and misery spread over the earth, 
with destructive wars breaking forth ever and anon 
even in the most enlightened nations. And if you 
ask science what it can do to remove the evils, 
it tells you that there are powerful elements for 
good in our world, in law, and progressive knowl- 
edge and life, and that new and higher agencies 
have been introduced to contend with and conquer 
the baser powers; but, if candid, it will add that, 
while it may so far restrain, it cannot subdue the 
disease which lies deep down in the depths of the 
human heart. 


340 APOLOGETICS. 


Let us come now to Scripture, and ask what it has 
to say. It announces that, as the works came suc- 
cessively from God’s hand, he could proclaim them 
to be all very good. But it declares at the same 
time that a disturbing element has been introduced. 
And have not sincere men felt that in all this Scrip- 
ture speaks truly, and that a false and flattering 
picture has been given by rationalism and sentimen- 
talism? In the midst of the struggle, Christianity, 
under the ministration of the Spirit, appears as the 
latest power introduced into our world ; and we see it 
repelling the evil, and gathering round it all the 
better elements ——as the magnet attracts the metals. 
When it is received, it stimulates the faculties, and 
calls forth new ideas, new motives, and new senti- 
ments. It has been the mother of all modern educa 
tion. John Knox was the first to introduce the 
universal education of the people in the eastern 
hemisphere, and the Puritans established it in the 
western world. The founders of all the older col- 
leges in Europe and Amerita were men of piety. 
Our religion has fostered all that is pure and enno- 
bling in the fine arts, in architecture, painting, and 
sculpture, and has frowned upon the debasing forms 
which appeared in pagan countries. But, in fulfill- 
ing its mission, it meets with opposition, and has to 
engage in a terrible conflict, with the powers of evil. 
We see the battle raging all around us in this city 
and in every city, in every dwelling and in every 
heart. Christianity thus appears in our world in 
analogy and in accordance with all that has gone 


WHAT THE BIBLE SAYS. 341 


before — a new power to contend with the evil, and 
overcome it. The history of our world is thus a 
unity from the commencement to the present time. 
The representation given in the Bible is of a piece 
with the view given by the latest researches of sci- 
ence and of history. 





APPENDIX. 


Art. 1. GAPS IN THE THEORY OF DEVELOPMENT. 


"THERE is a floating idea among many, and often embodied in a 
very dogmatic assertion, that, given only bare matter, every thing 
may be formed out of it by a process of development accord- 
ing to natural law. It may be of importance to show what are 
the unfilled-up hiatuses in this process. In doing so, I feel that 
I must bear in mind myself, and ask my opponents to do the 
same, that it is not easy, or rather it is impossible, for us to 
determine what are the properties to be found in all matter. It 
may be assumed that it has mechanical power, the power of 
motion in accordance with the three laws of Kepler. Has it 
also essentially a gravitating power inversely according to the 
square of the distance ? This is a point which cannot be settled, 
for it is not yet determined whether gravitation is a simple power 
or the result of other powers and collocations. Has it in its 
very nature the chemical properties? This also is undecided ; 
for we know not whether chemical affinities are original or 
derivative, — say, derived from other powers and dispositions of 
matter. As little can it be determined whether the powers of 
electricity, magnetism, and galvanism, or of emitting light and 
heat, belong essentially to all matter. The doubts and uncer- 
_ tainties on these points should lay an arrest on those who would 
dogmatize on the subject of development out of matter. Mean- 
while it is certain that, at the present stage of science, there are 
processes which no man of science can perform, and which we 
do not see performed in the laboratory of nature, either in the 
geological or historical ages. 


344 APPENDIX. 


1. Chemical action cannot be produced by mechanical power. 

2. Life, even in the lowest forms, cannot be produced from 
unorganized matter. Since Lecture I. (supra, pp. 27, 28) was de- 
livered, Dr. Frankland has published the results of experiments 
on solutions sealed up in vacuous tubes and exposed to a tem- 
perature from 155° to 160° C., great care being taken to exclude 
organic seeds from the tubes. The liquid in the tubes became 
more or less turbid; but “there was not the slightest evidence 
of life in any of the particles.” See ‘‘ Nature,” Jan. 19, 1871. 

3. Protoplasm can be produced only by living matter. 

4. Organized matter is made up of cells, and can be produced 
only by cells. Whence the first cell ? 

5. A living being can be produced only from a seed or germ. 
Whence the first vegetable seed ? 

6. An animal cannot be produced from a plant. Whence the 
first animal ? 

7. Sensation cannot be produced in insentient matter. 

8. The genesis of a new species of plant or animal has neve1 
come under the cognizance of man, either in pre-human or post- 
human ages, either in pre-scientific or scientific time. Darwin 
acknowledges this, and says that, should a new species suddenly 
arise, we have no means of knowing that itis such. (As to the 
Darwinian Theory, see Lect. II. and zzfra, Art. II.) 

g. Consciousness — that is, a knowledge of self and its opera- 
tions — cannot be produced out of mere matter or sensation. 

10. We have no knowledge of man being generated out of 
the lower animals. (See zzfra, Art. II.) 

11. All human beings, even savages (supra, pp. 48, 138 ; zfra, 
Art. II.), are capable of forming certain high ideas, such as 
those of God and duty. The brute creatures cannot be made 
to entertain these, by any training. 

With such tremendous gaps in the process, the theory which 
would derive all things out of matter by development is seen to 
be a very precarious one. I may add that development is in all 
cases a very complex process, implying a vast variety of agen- 
cies, — mechanical, chemical, probably vital, — adjusted to one 
another and the surrounding medium. The evolution-school 
ridicule those who would explain the operations of water by 


GAPS IN DEVELOPMENT THEORY. 345 


“ aquosity,” comparing it to Martinus Scriblerus’ method of ac- 
counting for the operation of the meat-jack by its inherent 
**meat-roasting quality.” But this is the very error into which 
they themselves fall when they account for development by the 
“development capacity.” The present business of physiolo- 
gists is not to rest satisfied with the power of devolopment, or 
the law of hereditary descent, but to seek to determine what 
are the separate powers and collocations involved in the process. 
In such investigations they need to attend, as Bacon recom- 
mended, to the “necessary rejections and exclusions,” or, as 
Whewell expresses it, “to the decomposition of facts.” 

Some, I find, are now calling ina power of Pangenesis com- 
mon to all matter. I do not deny, a priori, the existence of 
such a power: some very profound minds, penetrated with 
religion, such as Leibnitz, have been inclined to believe in it. 
I am ready to accept it as soon as it can be scientifically shown 
to exist, and something has been determined as to its nature. 
Of this I am pretty sure, that, if there be such an endowment, 
it must be a very complicated one, implying a correlation of 
properties. 

I am inclined to believe that all the phenomena referred to 
in this article—such as development, production of life — 
have appeared according to law, in the loose sense of the term ; 
that is, according to an order of some kind. I hold this in 
analogy with the whole method of Divine procedure in nature. 
It is very probable that, in many of the operations, there may 
have been secondary agencies acting as physical causes. But 
these secondary agencies are, at the present stage of science, 
unknown: even the agencies which produce development and 
heredity are very much unknown. In arguing, in these Lectures, 
for prevailing final cause, my appeal is not to the unknown, but 
the known, the traces of adaptation in every part of nature; and 
I cannot allow those who oppose me to appeal to the unknown, 
when the known is all in my favor. Science may be able to 
fill up some of the gaps; but when it has done so, I am sure, 
according to the whole analogy of nature, that, in the process, 
we will be able to discover final cause, or an adaptation of means 
to accomplish an end. 


15* 


346 APPENDIX. 


Art. II. DaARWIN’s DESCENT OF MAN. 


WHEN Mr. Darwin published his “ Origin of Species,” he at 
once gained as adherents to his theory a large number of young 
naturalists. His extensive and accurate acquaintance with all 
departments of Natural History, the pains taken by him in the 
collection of facts, and the simple and ingenious way in which 
he stated them, prepared men to listen to him; and, as they did 
so, they found he was able by Natural Selection to account for a 
number of phenomena which could not otherwise be explained. 
But of late there has appeared a disposition, even among those 
who were at first taken with the theory, carefully to review it. 
All candid minds admit that it explains much, that it explains 
modifications which plants and animals undergo from age to 
age; but many doubt whether it accounts for every thing, 
whether indeed there is not a profounder set of facts which it 
does not reach. 

Mr. Darwin is candid enough to admit that he cannot account 
for every thing connected with the appearance of vegetable and 
animal life. In his fifth edition (1869), he speaks “of life, with 
its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Cre- 
ator into a féw forms or into one.” We have seen (szfra, p. 80) 
that he allows: “‘ How a nerve comes to be sensitive to light 
hardly concerns us more than how life itself first originated.” 
But if Natural Selection cannot explain the origin of life, the 
origin of nerve-force or sensation, it is clear that there is a 
power above and beyond it, which operated when life appeared, 
and when sensation appeared, and which. may have operated on 
other occasions in producing higher and ever higher forms of 
living beings. 

It has been known, since at least the time of Aristotle, that 
there is a striking analogy between man and the lower animals, 
between all the tribes of animals, and between animals and 
plants ; and Mr. Darwin has, by an accumulation of facts, first 
in the “ Origin of Species,” and now in the “ Descent of Man,” 
illustrated this point more fully than was ever done before. But 
it does not therefore follow that the animal is evolved from the 


DARWIN'S DESCENT OF MAN. 347 


plant, and man from the lower animals. The paintings of Titian 
have all a certain character, which shows that they are the prod- 
ucts of the same great artist. So the correspondences in nat- 
ure, inanimate and animate, show that the whole proceeds from 
one grand Designing Mind. We know how the great painter 
accomplished his aim, by brush and colors and canvas. We 
see some of the means by which God effects his infinitely grander 
ends. We see that one of these is.the beneficent law of Natural 
Selection, whereby the weak, after enjoying their brief existence, 
expire without leaving seed, whereas the strong survive and 
leave a strong progeny. But the latest science cannot tell how 
Life arises, or Sensation, or Consciousness, or Intelligence, or 
Moral Discernment. Even with Mr. Darwin’s accumulation of 
facts bearing on the modification of species, we are made to feel 
that there are resicual phenomena left, which his theory does 
not explain, and which he does not profess or affect to explain, — 
in the appearance, for example, of the first plant or the first sen- 
tient creature. In the edition of the “Origin of Species 
issued in 1869, though he still stands up for Natural Selection 
as the most important means of producing modification, he 
allows that it is not the only one. And in his “ Animals and 
Plants under Domestication” (vol. il. p. 403), he cals in a new 
theory, that of Pangenesis, according to which every living creat- 
ure possesses innumerable minute atoms named “gemmules,” 
which are generated in every part of the body, are constantly 
moving, and have the power of reproduction, and in particular 
are collected in the generative organs, coming thither from every 
part of the body. ‘“ These almost infinitely numerous and minute 
gemmules must be included in each bud, ovule, spermatozoon, 
and pollen grain” (p. 366). It has been generally felt, even by 
those inclined to follow Mr. Darwin, that this hypothesis is 
exceedingly vague and confused and complicated. It has cer- - 
tainly no direct evidence in its favor, as these gemmules have 
never come under the eye of science. The circumstance that 
Mr. Darwin has been obliged to resort to such hypothesis is a 
proof that he feels that there is a residuum which his favorite 
principle of Natural Selection cannot reach. 

Whence, then, this element, which we ever come to when we 


348 APPENDIX. 


. 


go far enough back, when we dig sufficiently far down? The 
older naturalists called it the “vital principle,” not thereby 
meaning to explain it, but to show merely that they had come to 
an ultimate fact, for which they had to provide aname. Our 
younger naturalists do not know well what to make of it. Some 
of the more superficial of them would deny its existence, and 
explain all by molecular motion. But the profounder investiga- 
tors feel that they are ever coming to it, and call it by the name 
of Pangenesis, or (with Herbert Spencer) “ physiologica: units,” 
each with an innate power to build up and reproduce the organ- 
ism. Ido believe that this vital power, whatever it be, has its 
laws; and science is engaged in its proper work when it is seek- 
ing to discover them, and may sooner or later be rewarded with 
success. And of this we may be assured, that when the dis- 
covery is made the wonder of intelligent minds will not be 
diminished. 

Whence this element is still the question? It is at least pos- 
sible and conceivable that it may have been introduced by an 
immediate fiat of the Great First Cause, continuing to act asa 
cause, and producing, as the eons roll on, new germs ready to 
rise to living beings, or living beings ready to bring forth germs ; 
and we may be sure that what God thus places in our world will 
fit into all that has gone before, and become intertwined with it, 
and act in unison with it. But it is quite as possible that all 
this may be effected by some secondary agency, at present un- 
known, and which may or may not become known. The whole 
analogy of the Divine procedure, and the beautiful correspond- 
ence between the old and the new, seem to point to some com- 
mon causation producing the first life and all succeeding life. 
This agency, which like development is only a mode of the 
Divine agency, may have produced the first life, the first species, 
. every subsequent species, all according to a Divine plan. It is 
not the development theory: it goes farther back, and shows 
that behind the development there is a power which produced 
the life developed, and is involved in the development, — the 
powers working in which, naturalists do not profess to be able 
to explain. 

The development theory is largely an appeal to the unknown. 


\ 


DARWIN'S DESCENT OF MAN. 349 


No one supposes that evolution is an evolution from nothing. 
‘t is a law of intuitive intelligence, confirmed by all experience, 
that every production has a cause, and that there must be power 
in the agents acting as the cause to produce the effect. That 
which is evolved always implies a potency in that in which it is 
involved... A plant or animal with the power of development is 
always a product of previous causes, and is a cause of coming 
effects. But no one professes to be able to specify what are the 
powers involved in development. ‘These powers, if we could 
discover and separate them, might be found, at least one or more 
of them, to be intimately connected with, and indeed to proceed 
from, the power, whatever it is, which originates life,—to bea 
prolongation in fact of that life; the prolongation being implied 
in the evolution, so that, if there were not a continuance and a 
transmission of it, there would be no development. There is 
certainly an element somewhere which gives constant notice of 
its existence, but has hitherto afforded little insight into its 
nature, or the laws which it obeys. 

It isdoubted whether the law of Natural Selection, as unfolded 
by Darwin, can explain the modifications of plants and animals. 
Mr. St. George Mivart, in his work on the “ Genesis of Species,” 
has endeavored to show: (1) that Natural Selection is incom- 
petent to account for the incipient stages of useful structures ; 
(2) that it does not harmonize with the co-existence of closely 
similar structures of diverse origin; (3) that there are grounds 
for thinking that specific differences may be developed suddenly 
instead of gradually; (4) that the opinion that species have 
definite though very different limits to their variability is still 
tenable ; (5) that certain fossil transitional forms are absent, 
which might have been expected to be present; (6) that some 
facts of geographical distribution supplement other difficulties ; 
(7) that the objection drawn from the physiological difference 
between species and races still exists unrefuted ; (8) that there 
are many remarkable phenomena in organic forms upon which 
Natural Selection throws no light whatever, but the explanations 
of which, if they could be obtained, might throw light upon 
specific origination. I am far from saying that some of these 
formidable objections, supported as they are by an array of facts 


350 APPENDIX. 


by an accomplished naturalist, may not be answered. But this 
is certain, that for years, perhaps for ages to come, it will be an 
unsettled question whether Natural Selection can account for 
all the ordinary phenomena of the modification of organisms. 
In his latest work Mr. Darwin has employed his theory to 
account for the origin of man. In order to be able to judge of 
the success of the attempt, it may be proper to state briefly 
the conclusions which he reaches. Man is descended from the 
Simiade: “This family is divided, by almost all naturalists, into 
the Catarhine, or Old World monkeys, all of which are charac- 
terized (as their name expresses) by the peculiar structure of 
their nosttils, and by having four premolars in each jaw; and 
into Platyrhine group, or New World monkeys (including two 
very distinct sub-groups), all of which are characterized by dif- 
ferently constructed nostrils, and by having six premolars in each 
jaw. Some other small differences might be mentioned. Now 
man unquestionably belongs in his dentition, in the structure of 
his nostrils, and some other respects, to the Catarhine, or Old 
World division; nor does he resemble the Platyrhines more 
closely than the Catarhines in any characters, excepting in a few 
of not much importance, and apparently of an adaptive charac- 
ter. Therefore it would be against all probability to suppose 
that some ancient New World species had varied, and had thus 
produced a man-like creature, with all the distinctive characters 
proper to the Old World division, losing at the same time all its 
own distinctive characters. There can consequently hardly be 
a doubt that man is an off-shoot from the Old World Simian 
stem; and that, under a genealogical point of view, he must be 
classed with the Catarhine division” (Descent of Man, Part I. 
c. vi., British edition, 1871). As man agrees with anthropomor- 
phous apes, ‘‘not only in. those characters which he possesses 
in common with the whole Catarhine group, but in other peculiar 
characters, such as the absence of a tail, and of callosities, and 
in general appearance, we may infer that some ancient member 
of the anthropomorphous sub-group gave birth to man.” “It 
is probable that Africa was formerly inhabited by extinct apes 
closely allied to the gorilla and chimpanzee; and as these two 
species are now man’s nearest allies, it is somewhat more prob- 


\ DARWIN’S DESCENT OF MAN. 351 


able that our early progenitors lived on the African continent 
than elsewhere.” ‘“ We do not know whether man is descended 
from some comparatively small species like the chimpanzee, or 
from one as powerful as the gorilla.” He can tell us that “the 
ape-like progenitors of man probably lived in society ;” that 
“the early progenitors of man were no doubt inferior in intel- 
Ject, and probably in social disposition, to the lowest existing 
savages ;” that “the early progenitors of man were no 
doubt once covered with hair, both sexes having beards ;” that 
“their ears were pointed and capable of movement ;”’ and that 
“their bodies were provided with a tail, having the proper 
muscles.” : 

Mr. Darwin can carry our genealogy still farther back: “ Man 
is descended from a hairy quadruped, furnished with a tail and 
pointed ears, probably arboreal in its habits, and an inhabitant 
of the Old World. This creature, if its whole structure had 
been examined by a naturalist, would have been classed amongst 
the Quadrumana, as surely as would the common, and still more 
ancient, progenitor of the Old and New World monkeys. The 
Quadrumana and all the higher mammals are probably derived 
from an ancient marsupial animal; and this, through a long line 
of diversified forms, either from some reptile-like or some 
amphibian-like creature, and this again from some fish-like 
animal.- In the dim obscurity of the past we can see that the 
early progenitor of all the vertebrata must have been an aquatic 
animal, provided with branchiz, with the two sexes united in the 
same individual, and with the most important organs of the body 
(such as the brain and heart) imperfectly developed. This 
animal seems to have been more like the larve of our existing 
marine Ascidians than any other form known.” (Part II. c. xxi.) 

I have allowed Mr. Darwin to draw the picture. I confess I 
shrink from it. Iam inclined to urge that the very circumstance 
that man has a consciousness of a something within, which 
separates him from the brutes; that he claims to have a higher 
origin, is a consideration of some value in determining the 
question. Man’s very feeling is a presumption in favor of his 
having a noble lineage. But it will be necessary to examine the 
logical connections of the theory. 


352 APPENDIX. 


Mr. Darwin’s theory as to man’s origin leans very much on 
his general theory as to the origin of species. Those who doubt 
of the success of his attempt to explain the origin of animal spe- 
cies will have greater doubts of his being able to account for the 
origin of man. There are persons favorably disposed towards 
the theory, as applied to the lower animals, who are not pre- 
pared to allow that it can explain the production of a being with 
a responsible and immortal soul. It is acknowledged on all 
hands that Natural Selection cannot account for the origin of 
life ; and the power beyond, which produced life, may have found 
a fitting and worthy occasion for a farther operation in producing 
man. The difficulty which there is in applying it to man’s intel- 
Jectual and moral nature is making some doubt of the whole 
theory, as capable of explaining all the phenomena even of 

vegetable and animal modifications. 

Again, there are acknowledged to be wide gaps in the trans- 
mission, to be many breaks in the genealogy. Thus Mr. Darwin 
acknowledges that he cannot account for the appearance of the 
mental powers in animals. “In what manner the mental powers 
were first developed in the lowest organisms is as hopeless an 
inquiry as how life first originated. These are problems for the 
distant future, if they are ever to be solved by man.” (Part I. 
c. ii.) Some of us wish that he had used the same guarded 
language as to the origin of man’s mental powers as he has 
used in regard to that of the lower organisms. It is clear that 
Natural Selection cannot explain every thing, and the production 
of man may be one of the things which are beyond its reach. 
We are ever coming in sight of a higher power; we need it to 
produce life, we need it to produce the instincts of animals, and 
a fortiort we need it to account for the rational and moral en- 
dowments. All analogy constrains me to cling to the idea that 
the same power of God, whether acting directly or by secondary 
agency, which produced life at first and endowed the lower 
creatures with psychical properties, has also been employed in 
creating man and furnishing him with his lofty attributes. 

He acknowledges that there are breaks, which he cannot fill 
up, ‘‘ between man and the higher apes” (vol. i. p. 187); and he 
speaks more expressly (p. 200) of “the great break in the organic 


DARWIN'S DESCENT OF MAN. 353 


chain between man and his nearest allies, which cannot be bridged 
over by any extinct or living species.” This means that the ani- 
mal, which could have given birth to man, has not been found 
in the geological ages, and has not been seen in historical times, 
and is not now—so far as is known — on the face of the earth, 
This is surely a great want in a science which professes to be 
built on facts. In the lack of facts, he falls back on “the gen- 
eral principle of evolution” (p. 200). I admit the existence of 
evolution ; but I oppose the theory that would account for every 
production by evolution, and, in the absence of facts, I cannot 
allow him to appeal to a principle which, in its exclusiveness, 
_ cannot be established without the facts. But he tells us that ‘ we 
have every reason to believe that breaks in the series are simply 
the results of so many forms having become extinct” (p. 187). 
But surely it would only be becoming to be less sure and dog- 
matic, till these forms cast up, or till we can find a monkey on 
the earth capable by domestication, or otherwise, of producing 
a man. 

Farther, if we have evidence otherwise of man coming into 
existence by a special act of God, there is not sufficient scientific 
strength in the Darwinian theory to overturn it. Now many 
believe that the Scriptures, while they say little or nothing as to 
the origin of animal species, settle the question of man’s origin. 
We have seen (supra, Lecture II.) that the book of Genesis has 
anticipated geology by three thousand years, in telling of the 
successive stages of the production of matter and animated 
beings ; and it may well be attended to in speaking of the origin 
of man. Mr. Darwin is obliged to speak of it as being probable 
that God at first breathed life into two or three forms: there is 
surely, then, nothing inconceivable or improbable in the Almighty 
breathing into man the breath of life and making him a living 
soul. These Scriptures are supported by a body of evidence, 
external and internal, which those who have weighed it believe 
to be far stronger than the proof that can be adduced in favor 
of the hypothesis of man being produced by Natural Selection. 
Those who have looked most carefully into their OWn nature will 
be ready to acknowledge that the Scripture account, which repre- 
sents man as formed out of the dust, but with a soul formed in 


354 APPENDIX. 


the image of God, is far more accordant with our experience 
than that which would derive both body and soul from the lower 
animals. To oppose this, we have only a hypothesis which ex- 
plains a number of facts, but is acknowledged not to explain all 
the facts, and to fail to explain the facts relating to the appear- 
ance of new powers. Every reader of Mr. Darwin’s latest book 
has observed how often he is obliged in his candor to use the 
epithet “probably,” and to say, “it is probable.” It is ac- 
knowledged that there is no decisive fact to support the theory, 
nothing of the nature of an experimentum crucis. In these cir- 
cumstances, most men will prefer abiding by the simple Script- 
ure statement, rather than commit themselves to a theory which 
has so many breaks that cannot be filled up. 

The impression left, on reading the account of the creation of 
man in the book of Genesis, is that while man’s: higher nature, 
his vod, which contemplates eternal truth and the infinite God, 
was produced at once by the breath of the Great Spirit, his 
lower nature, and especially his body, may have been formed 
out of existing materials, it may be by secondary causes. And 
there is nothing unreasonable in the supposition that these sec- 
ondary agencies may be the same as effect the growth of the 
young in the womb. “1 will praise thee; for I am fearfully and 
wonderfully made: marvellous are thy works; and that my soul’ 
knoweth right well. My substance was not hid from thee, when 
I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts 
of the earth. Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being un- 
perfect ; and in thy book all my members were written, which. 
in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of 
them” (Ps. cxxxix. 14-16). The whole school are fond of 
appealing to the grand generalization of Von Baer, that the 
growth of the animal in the womb, that the various stages which 
it reaches, correspond very much to the progress of the animal 
races in the geological ages. But I have not been able to dis- 
cover that they have succeeded in detecting the precise agen- 
cies which produce each of the effects, and the correspondences 
between them. There is a mystery here which they have not 
cleared up, indeed have not attempted to clear up. The analogy 
seems to me to point to a set of powers above both the processes, 


DARWIN'S DESCENT OF MAN. Biss 


and regulating both. And may there not have been a third 
process analogous to the other two,—the process by which 
man’s body was created, diverse from the animal body and yet 
in affinity with it? There may be an agency or set of agencies 
above natural selection, above even hereditary transmission — 
which may, in fact, be ruled by it— producing, first, each species 
of animal, and the progressive advance of animals; secondly, 
the growth of animals in the womb; aad finally, the animal 
part of man. In some such way as this, by the work “made in 
secret,” ana “curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the 
earth,” may we get a glimpse of the general causes which pro- 
duced the organs in living beings, and in certain living beings 
the rudiments of organs, — such as the mammz in the male sex, 
— which have not been developed into utilized organs. 

But, coming more closely to Mr. Darwin’s arguments, we find 
them to amount to two: one derived from the resemblances be- 
tween man and the lower animals, and the other from Sexual 
Selection. 

There is a resemblance in the bodily structure of man and the 
lower animated creation. Mr. Huxley comes to the conclusion 
that “‘man in all parts of his organization differs less from the 
higher apes than these do from the lower members of the same 
group.” Mr. Darwin declares that, “although man has no just 
right to form a separate Order for his own reception, he may 
perhaps claim a distinct Sub-order, or Family” (Part I. c. vi.). 
The place which man’s body —represented in Scripture as 
formed out of the dust — should hold, is a question for compara- 
tive anatomists to settle. If it is determined that man’s bodily 
frame is of a higher order than that of the highest animal, then 
they will have to account for the superiority. If they prove that 
it should be placed alongside that of the apes, then they will 
have to account for his great intellectual pre-eminence, which 
cannot arise in this case from the body, but must come from 
some other quarter. 

_ Coming to the soul of man and brute, we find Mr. Darwin on 
one eccasion, when hard pressed with a difficulty, bursting out 
into the declaration, “ We really know little abot the mind of 
the lower animals” (Part II. c. xxi.). Weare reminded of the 


356 APPENDIX. 


famous saying of the Swiss philosopher, that we will never 
be able to know what brute instinct is till we are in the dog’s 
head without being the dog. Mr. Darwin candidly acknowledges 
that he cannot trace the mental faculties from the lower creatures 
up to man. “ Undoubtedly it would have been very interesting 
to have traced the development of each separate faculty from the 
state in which it exists in the lower animals to that in which it 
exists in man; but neither my ability nor knowledge permit the 
attempt” (Part I.c. v.). Till the attempt is made, and success- 
fully completed, we have no right to assert that man’s higher 
powers are developed out of animal powers ; nor, as Mr. Dar- 
win maintains, that “the mental faculties of man and the lower 
animals do not differ in kind, though immensely in degree.” 

I agree with Mr. Darwin in thinking that we cannot very well 
distinguish between what is vaguely called “ Instinct,” and what 
with equal vagueness is called ‘‘ Reason.” The fact is, Instinct 
is merely a loose but convenient name for a set of operations, the 
nature of which is confessedly very much unknown ; and Reason 
has been used to denote so many different intellectual exercises, 
that we cannot very well determine what we should understand 
by it. One thing, however, seems very clear to me: that Instinct 
is a complex operation, always implying a number of agencies 
and a concurrence of agencies, and that each of them has its 
laws or properties, which we will never be able to discover till 
we can separate the threads that make up the web. It may be 
farther allowed that Instinct has always more or less of intelli- 
gence in it; that is, intelligence is involved as one of the agencies. 
But it has to be added that intelligence, or Reason, has always 
more or less of Instinct involved ; that is, it knows, believes, and 
judges, without having or being able to give a mediate reason. 

Mr. Darwin has successfully shown that there is a resem- 
blance between the intelligence and instincts of man on the 
one hand, and those of the lower animals on the other. But 
in man those operations which we call Instinct become fewer, 
and occupy a less important position, while irtelligence takes a 
higher place ; and human intelligence is found to have an ele- 
ment not exercised by the ant, the horse, the dog, the elephant, 
the ape, or the most advanced of the brute creation. 


DARWIN’S DESCENT OF MAN. 357 


I am convinced that in many cases the intellectual powers of 
man and the lower animals are not identical, but simply analo- 
gous ; that is, they serve the same end, but do not follow the same 
laws, or rather do not proceed from precisely the same agencies 
or properties. What I mean will be understood when I refer to 
the circumstance, familiar to every naturalist, that the wings of 
a butterfly and the wings of a bird are represented not as the same 
organs, but as analogous to each other; that is, both serve the 
same purposes of flight, but have not the same structure. In like 
manner there is reason to believe that the same ends are accom- 
plished in man and brute by different mental faculties ; or rather 
there is a discerning or rational power in the operation as per- 
formed by man, which is not in the act as performed by the inferior 
creatures. Arat is not apt to be caught a second time in the same 
trap. The horse in the carriage is ready to start when the door 
is audibly closed; and Mr. Darwin refers to a case in which it 
did so when no whipping would make it start. This may seem 
reasoning, but it is not: it arises merely from the association of 
ideas, a very inferior intellectual operation to reasoning. I 
have remarked elsewhere (Laws of Discursive Thought, iii. § 
77), “It is ever to be understood that the train of ideas raised 
by association, while it aids reasoning, and is the means of 
enabling us to carry on reasoning so rapidly, is not in itself 
reasoning. Logicians have shown that, in all proper reasoning, 
the mind has before it three terms, and perceives the relations 
between them. I believe that much of what is called reasoning 
in brutes, and even among children, proceeds from mere associa- 
tion. When the burnt child, ard, we may add, the burnt dog, 
dreads the fire, it is from the mere law of co-existence. All their 
lives men are more or less under the influence of mere associa- 
tion, when we imagine them to be reasoning. They are led not 
by a concatenated train of discovered relations, but by mere im- 
pulse, as is said; that is, by the suggestion which comes up. 
Hence the mistakes into which they are ever falling, — mistakes 
not to be referred to the reasoning power. In all judgment, and 
in reasoning as implying judgment, there is a perception of the 
relations of the notions to each other; and it is only thus we 
can reach a sound and safe conclusion.” This is an example of 


358 APPENDIX. 


what I believe to be very common, —of a higher mental power 
being involved in an operation performed by man, which, to the 
superficial observer, may seem the same as an unreasoning act - 
performed by one of the lower animals. 

I have doubts whether the lower animals can abstract, whether 
they can generalize. That they can perceive’ resemblances and 
differences, and remember them, and that they associate things 
by these, I have no doubt; but that they can form general 
notions, and abstract notions, such as men entertain, —-such as 
all men, even savages, are capable of entertaining, — there is no 
reason to believe. For what is involved in a general notion, — 
say in the general notion, man? Not merely that all the beings 
put into the class resemble each other, but that the beings pos- 
sess common properties, and that the notion must embrace all 
the objects possessing the common properties. In an abstract 
notion it is involved not merely that we image a part after 
having perceived a whole, but that we regard the part as a 
part; that we regard rationality as an attribute of man. Such 
general and abstract notions are intellectual exercises of a high 
order, and there is no reason to believe that the lower animals 
are capable of them. Abstraction as évery one knows, is in- 
volved in arithmetic. Men low in the scale of intelligence can 
proceed only a very little way in the employment of numbers. 
Still, with the use of their digits, they can rise to the number five 
orten. But there is no reason to believe that the lower animals 
can make any enumeration. They miss a person usually asso- 
ciated with others now before them; but there is no proof that 
they can perform, or be taught to perform, as even savages 
can, such simple operations as addition and subtraction. The 
school that I am opposing are accustomed to ascribe man’s 
superiority very much to the power of speech. But many of 
the lower animals have the power of uttering articulate sounds. 
“ Parrots,” says Locke, “will be taught to make articulate 
sounds enough, which yet are by no means capable of language. 
Besides articulate sounds, therefore, it was further necessary 
that man should be able to use these sounds as signs of internal 
conceptions, and to make them stand as marks of the ideas 
within his mind.” This is the defect of the lower animals, 


DARWIN’S DESCENT OF MAN. 359 


lying not in their vocal organs, but in the mental incapacity to 
form the “internal conceptions ” implied in the intelligent use 
of speech. 

Of this Iam sure, that the lower animals cannot form those 
lofty ideas which constitute the peculiarities, the characteristics, 
of man: the ideas of necessary truth, of moral good and in- 
finity, culminating in the idea of God. I allow that the ideas of 
this high kind entertained by savages are of a very vague and 
meagre character. But they are there (see Lecture V.) in their 
rudiments, and capable of being brought forth and cultivated, 
and made to go down by the laws of hereditary descent. Here, 
then, we have an essential distinction between man and the 
lower animals. There are ideas which all men, and no brutes, 
are capable of forming. 

It has often been remarked that the lower animals, dogs and 
horses, act as if they had a conscience. But this arises simply 
from their having the accompaniments of conscience, the feelings 
which are associated with conscientious convictions in man. 
Much of what seems conscience originates in the mere associ- 
ated hope of reward and fear of penalty. There is no ground 
for believing that any of the lower animals have a sense of good 
as good, and of binding obligation, or a sense of evil as evil, and 
as deserving of disapproval. : 

Mr. Darwin’s theory of the origin of our moral ideas is one 
of the loosest and most unsatisfactory, — altogether one of the 
weakest ever propounded. It is clear that he is not at home in 
philosophical and ethical subjects, as he is in questions of nat- 
ural history. The following is his summary of his ethical 
theory: “A moral being is one who is capable of comparing 
his past and future actions and motives, — of approving of some 
and disapproving of others ; and the fact that man is the one 
being, who, with certainty, can be thus designated, makes the 
greatest of all distinctions between him and the lower animals. 
But in our third chapter I have endeavored to show that the 
moral sense follows, firstly, from the enduring and always pres- 
ent nature of the social instincts, in which respect man agrees 
with the lower animals ; and, secondly, from his mental fac- 
ulties being highly active, and his impressions of past events 


360 — APPENDIX. 


extremely vivid, in which respects he differs from the lower 
animals. Owing to this condition of mind, man cannot avoid 
looking backwards and comparing the impressions of past events 
and actions. He also continually looks forward. Hence, after 
some temporary desire or passion has mastered his social in- 
stincts, he will reflect and compare the now weakened impres- 
sion of such past impulses with the ever present social instinct ; 
and he will then feel that sense of dissatisfaction which all un- 
satisfied instincts leave behind them. Consequently he resolves 
to act differently for the future. And this is conscience. Any 
instinct which is permanently stronger or more enduring than 
another gives rise to a feeling which we express by saying that 
it ought to be obeyed. A pointer dog, if able to reflect on his 
past conduct, would say to himself, 1 ought (as, indeed, we say 
of him) to have pointed at that hare, and not have yielded to 
the passing temptation of hunting it.” (Part II. c. xxi.) 

There is an immense number of unfilled-up breaks in this 
process, far more so than even in his genealogy of man. That 
the lower animals are social beings, and that this arises from 
social instincts, is admitted. But social feelings are one thing, 
and a sense of right and wrong another thing, — quite as differ- 
ent as color is from shape or sound. It is the sense of right 
and wrong that constitutes man a moral and (taken along with 
free will and intelligence) a responsible being. It is when man 
has his social and instinctive qualities under subjection to the 
moral law revealed by conscience that he becomes a virtuous 
being. But these higher qualities present in man are wanting 
in the lower animals, which are, in consequence, not moral or 
accountable beings. It may even be allowed that our moral 
nature is intimately connected with our social feelings. Most 
of our moral perceptions rise on the contemplation of social 
relation;,—our relations to our fellow-men and to God. But 
they sp ing up in breasts susceptible of them: they would not 
come furth in a stock or a stone; there is no evidence that they 
come forth in the souls of animals. There is no doubt that man 
is more inclined to look back on the past, and reflect upon it, 
than the lower creatures, which, 1 suspect, are not much given 
to musing or moralizing. But it is one thing to look. back on 


DARWIN'S DESCENT OF MAN. ; 361 


the past, and another to regard it as morally good or evil. Man 
is led to declare that there is a moral law which “ ought to be 
obeyed,” that there are instincts which ought to be restrained ; 
but there is no evidence of such a moral decision being come 
to by the pointer dog, or any other animal. The reference to 
the pointer is a clear evidence that Mr. Darwin has not so much 
as weighed what is involved in our moral perceptions, judgments, 
and sentiments, how much is involved in the idea of right and 
wrong, of ought, obligation, merit and demerit. 

As the general result of this survey, we see that man has 
ideas involving principles different from any to be found in the 
lower creatures. The possession of these puts man in an en- 
tirely different order from the brutes that perish: they make 
him a responsible being, and point to and guarantee an immor- 
tality. I believe that man so endowed must have come from 
the Power which created matter at first, and added life as the 
ages rolled on, and gave the brutes their instincts or incipient 
intelligence, and crowned his works by creating a moral and 
responsible being. 

More than one half of the “ Descent of Man” is occupied with 
an investigation of Sexual Selection. The discussion of this 
question must be left to those who have given attention, as Mr. 
Darwin has done, to the courtship, the propagation, and do- 
mestication of animals. Most of what he says has no bearing 
on the subjects discussed in these Lectures. The views which 
he presents are always ingenious, but they seem to me to be 
wire-drawn and overstretched. When animals have a tame, 
dull hue, it is because they are thereby less exposed to danger 
than if they had conspicuous colors. If a male has bright colors, 
it is to attract the female. He adds, however: ‘“ We ought to 
be cautious in concluding that colors which appear to us dull 
are not attractive to the females of certain species. We should 
bear in mind such cases as those of the common house-sparrow, 
in which the male differs much from the female, but does not 
exhibit any bright tints.” Female birds have commonly a duller 
color, as bright hues would expose them to beasts of prey in 
hatching. Some males are white, as thereby they are rendered 
attractive to the females. But in other cases black seems the 

16 . 


B02 APPENDIX. 


favorite color. “It seems at first sight a monstrous supposi- 
tion that the jet blackness of the negro has been gained through 
sexual selection; but this view is supported by various an- 
alogies, and we know that negroes admire their own black- 
ness” (Part II. c. xx.) A law so flexible may be drawn round 
a great many phenomena, and seem to bind them. Iam sure 
that in the vegetable kingdom (which I have studied more care- 
fully) there is a beauty of flower which cannot have been pro- 
duced by selection on the part of man, for I have seen it in 
remote isles of Scotland, and virgin forests of America never 
trodden by human footsteps ; and this in plants which cannot 
have been aided by beauty-loving insects carrying the pollen. 
And if there be beauty in the vegetable kingdom independent 
of creature-selection, there may surely be the same in the animal 
kingdom. Here, as in so many other cases, his law explains so 
much, but not the whole. In all these speculations,—for Mr. 
Darwin acknowledges that his work is highly speculative, — 
there are laws and operations implied, of which he can give no 
account on his theory of Natural Selection. Whence the 
strong impulses of the males, and the coyness of the females, 
all implied in the laws which he illustrates, that the male needs 
gay colors and showy forms to attract the female, who does not 
require these? Whence the love of the beautiful in the female, 
the love of certain colors and certain forms, an anticipation of 
the higher esthetics among cultivated minds ? Whence that love 
of music appearing in birds, and becoming so cultivated and 
elevating a taste in-advanced humanity? In the way in which 
all these things have appeared, and in the forms which they 
have taken, and in the mutual adaptations of all things to one 
another, and to seasons and circumstances, I delight to trace a 
presiding Intelligence, foreseeing all things from the beginning, 
and guiding them towards a grand and beneficent end. 


Art. III. ON Mr. HERBERT SPENCER’S PHILOSOPHY. 


Mr. SPENCER is acknowledged, on all hands, to be a powerfuy 
speculative thinker. Give him a set of facts, and he at once 


MR. SPENCER’S PHILOSOPHY. 36a 


proceeds to generalize them, and devise a theory to account for 
them. He evidently regards it as his function to unify the meta- 
physics of the day and the grand discoveries lately made in phys- 
ical science. He is fond of declaring that a number of the great 
laws announced in our day as the result of a long course ot 
inductive investigation, such as that of the Conservation of 
Physical Force, can be discovered by @ frzorz cogitation. His 
strength is his weakness. Instead of proceeding, as Bacon rec- 
ommends, gradadint from lower to higher axioms, and only in 
the end to the highest of all, he mounts at once to the very lof- 
tiest generalizations. My friend Hugh Mille: said of an author, 
that in his argument there was an immense number of fae 
steeks (fallen stitches): the language might be applied to Mr. 
Spencer’s philosophy. It may be safely said of some of his 
high speculations, that they will not be either proven or dis- 
proven for ages. 

1. He proceeds on the philosophy of Sir William Hamilton 
and Dr. Mansel, maintaining that all our knowledge is Relative ; 
turning the doctrine to a very different purpose from that contem- 
plated by the Edinburgh and Oxford metaphysicians. Hamilton 
thought that the doctrine of Relativity, with the consequent 
ignorance of the nature of things, might be applied to humble 
the pride of the intellect ; Mansel used it to undermine religious 
rationalism ; and Spencer employs it, perhaps more logically 
than either, to show that God, if there be a God, is unknowable. 
I have been laboring in these Lectures (see IV., V.), and in 
my works generally (Meth. of Div. Gov., App. VI.; Intuitions, 
Part III. B. 1. c. iii. § 6), to show that the doctrine, as advocated 
by these metaphysicians, is not a true one ; and I am thus pre- 
pared to reject that structure which Mr. Spencer would rear 
upon it. We know self directly in the state in which it is at the 
time, and not merely in relation to something else declared to be 
unknown. 

2. It follows that there is nothing inconceivable or contradic- 
tory, as the school maintains that there is, in such ideas as Self- 
Existence and First Cause. We know ourselves as existing, 
and can thence conceive of others, of God, as existing. We 
certainly do not know ourselves as self-existing, because we dis- 


364. APPENDIX. 


cover that we are caused ; but we can conceive —I mean, think 
and believe — that God, while he exists, is uncaused. I believe 
that all causation carries us to a substance with powers. The 
substances we’ see on earth are evidently derived ; but, as we 
mount up, we come to an underived substance, — and this with- 
out falling even into an apparent contradiction. The whole of 
these alleged contradictions, so much dwelt on by Hamilton in 
his “ Discussions,” and Mansel in his “ Bampton Lectures,” 
and Spencer in the opening of his “ First Principles,” are con- 
tradictions simply in the propositions of the metaphysicians, and 
not at all in the actual laws or beliefs of the human mind. 

3. It may be doubted whether he is entitled to say that there 
1s an unknown reality beyond the known phenomena. I have 
referred to this in Lecture VI. I must leave the farther discus- 
sior of it to his school, some of whom will deny that he can on 
his principles know so certainly that there is an unknown. 

4. I have shown, in the same Lecture, that the fundamental 
verities in the mind, properly interpreted, lead us to a God so 
far known. He talks of our knowing certain things, and says 
(First Prin. p. 143), “ All things known to us are manifestations 
of the unknowable ;” and (p. 170) that force is ‘a certain con- 
ditioned effect of unconditioned cause ; ” and (p. 165) “ our con- 
ception of space is produced by some mode of the unknowable ; ” 
and he speaks (p. 168) of “the unknown cause which produces in 
us the effects called Matter, Space, Time, and Motion.” I hold 
that a cause thus known is so far known. 

5. He utterly fails to account on his principles, though he 
seems to be doing so, for some of the most certain of known 
phenomena, such as Sensation, Nervous Action, Life, and Con- 
sciousness. 

Sensation. — Among all the laws mentioned by him, such as 
the Persistence of Force, Instability of the Homogeneous, no 
one is in the least degree fitted to produce this common phenom- 
enon, experienced by all of us, in the shape of pleasure and 
pain. ‘This is one of the most patent of the gaps in his system. 

Nervous Action.— He tells us (First Prin. p. 476) that, 
thiough the “continuous sorting and grouping together of 
changes or motions which constitutes nervous function, there is 


—_———~ oe 


MR. SPENCER'S PHILOSOPHY. 365 


gradually wrought that sorting and grouping together of matter 
which constitutes nervous structure.” Here, as in so many 
other cases, he misses the differentia of what he would explain. 
There are everywhere instances of “continuous sorting and 
grouping together of changes or motions,” —we have it, I 
believe, in the molecular motion of every body, — without those 
peculiar operations found in the nerves, sensor or motor, affer- 
ent or efferent. 

Life. — He tells us (Biology, vol. i. pp. 1-3) that organic bod- 
ies are composed mainly of ultimate units, having extreme 
mobility. Three of the elements, oxygen, hydrogen, and nitro- 
gen, are known only in the aériform state, and defy all efforts to 
liquefy them. Three of them again, hydrogen, carbon, and nitro- 
gen, have affinities that are narrow in their range and low in their 
intensity ; while oxygen displays a very high chemical energy. 
Thus these two extreme contrasts—the one between physical 
mobilities, the other between chemical activities — fulfil, in the 
highest degree, a certain farther condition of facility of differen- 
tiation and integration. He discovers—and I believe he is 
right —a significance in this. It is part of the means by which 
organisms fulfil their functions, specially the phenomena of 
evolution. But while such properties are conditions which ena- 
ble life to work, they certainly do not constitute life,— still less are 
they fitted to produce the beauteous and bounteocus forms of life - 
which we see around us: they might have been wasted quite as 
readily in producing ugly or useless products. 

Many attempts have been made to define “ Life,” to show 
what it consists in. Most of these have been unsuccessful; but 
the most unsuccessful of them allis Mr. Spencer’s. I quote his 
own account of his efforts, given in his “ Psychology,” Part III. 
c.i.: “In Part I. c. iv. of the ‘ Principles of Biology,’ the prox- 
imate idea we arrived at was, that Life is ‘the definite combina- 
tion of heterogeneous changes, both simultaneous and successive.’ 
In the next chapter, it was shown that, to develop this proxi- 
mate idea into a complete idea, it is needful to recognize the 
connection between these actions going on within an organism, 
and the actions going on without it. We saw that life is ade- 
quately conceived only when we think of it as ‘the definite 


366 APPENDIX. 


combination of heterogeneous changes, both simultaneous and 
successive, in correspondences with external co-existences and 
sequences.’ Afterwards, this definition was found to be reduci- 
ble to the briefer definition, ‘The continuous adjustment of 
internal relations to external relations ;’ and though, by leaving 
out the characteristic of heterogeneity, this definition is rendered 
somewhat too wide, so that it includes a few non-vital phenomena 
which stimulate vitality, yet practically no error is likely to result 
from its use.” The definition would apply to the appearance 
of meteors within our atmosphere in autumn, to the simultaneous 
Springing of buds, or the arrival of migrating birds, in spring, te 
the issuing of bees from the hive when it swarms, or even to the 
arrival of the elected of the people to the House of Commons in 
London, or the House of Representatives in Washington. The 
last form of the definition would apply to a man putting on his 
clothes and keeping them clean, or the housewife suiting her 
dwelling to its surroundings. In all of them the essential ele- 
ment of life is omitted ; and, in accounting for the things he has 
defined, he has not accounted for life. 

Consciousness. — Still less among all his laws, which are, after 
all, mere generalized facts of physical nature, has he any means 
of producing knowledge, — the knowledge which the mind takes 
of things without it, and of itself and its own operations. Be- 
cause iorce persists, it does not follow that we should come to 
know force, or power, or goodness. If he attribute these, as I 
believe he does, to a cause beyond sensible phenomena, I agree 
with him; but then. the power which did this is so far known 
to us. 

Intelligence. — In “ Psychology,” Part III. c. ix., he says that 
every act of intelligence is “in essence an adjustment of inner 
to outer relations.” Surely the very “essence” of intelligence 
is lost sight of in such a definition. It is still more vague and 
unsatisfactory than his definition of Life. It would apply to the 
adjustment of a letter to its envelope, of a picture to its frame, 
of a jewel to its casket, of a tree to the climate. In Part IV.c. vi., 
he says, “Each act of recollection is the establishment of an 
inner relation, answering to some outer relation.” When I recol- 
lect that at a certain time I was happy, and at another time I 


MR. SPENCER'S PHILOSOPHY. 367 


was unhappy, I discover some inner, but I see no outer rela- 
tions. 

6. He cannot account for our higher ideas, such as those of 
Power and Moral Good. He says (First Prin. p. 22) “that the 
disciples of Kant and those of Locke have both their views 
recognized in the theory that organized experiences produce 
forms of thought.” Now I admit that experiences may come to 
descend in the shape of tendencies,—tendencies to act ina 
particular way; as, for example, in a disposition to hoard or to 
spend, to show cunning or courage. But there is no evidence 
that they can produce what is meant by a:“ form of thought ;” 
but which might better be denominated a first truth, or first 
principle, or a fundamental law of belief. First, there is no proof 
that the brutes have any of those forms of thought which higher 
metaphysicians discover in man,—as the necessary conviction 
that every event must have a cause, and the ethical principle that 
good is meritorious and rewardable, and that sin is of evil desert 
and punishable. The lower animals nowhere appear with these 
forms of thought, and man is found everywhere with them. Any 
tendencies which man may acquire by organized experiences are 
not of the nature of a fundamental law of thought, belief, or judg- 
ment. They are rather tastes and predilections, or tribal and 
national characteristics, acquired in the first instance by individ- 
uals, and going down from one generation to another. They 
have no reference to beliefs or truths, but are mere inclinations 
seeking gratification and impelling to action. They do not carry 
with them self-evidence or necessity of thought. Whereas the 
forms of thought, in the philosophic use of the term, carry with 
them their own evidence ; are common to all men, are catholic 
or universal; are found working in children as well as among 
persons arrived at mature life, among savages as well as civilized 
men. It is scarcely necessary to explain that, in adult and civil- 
ized life, they have higher applications than-among children or 
barbarians ; but they are ever operating in the one class as in 
the other. 

7. He places very heterogeneous objects and operations in his 
wide generalizations. To mention only a few: He is speaking 
(First Prin., Part II. c. viii.) of the Transformation and Equiva- 


368 APPENDIX. 


lence of Forces, meaning Physical Forces ; and he passes on, as 
if they were the same, to Mental and Moral and Social Forces, 
which are regulated by mental laws and by motives. He tells 
us that “a small society, no matter how superior the character 
of its members, cannot exhibit the same quantity of social action 
as a large one.” As if the Jews, the Athenians, the Dutch, the 
Scotch, the Puritans, though comparatively small peoples, had 
not exerted a very powerful social influence. Then he shows, as 
if it were all done by an accumulation of physical force, that, 
when there is an unusually abundant harvest, capital seeks 
investment, labor is’ expended, and new channels of commerce 
are opened, while there are more marriages and an increase of 
population. 

In c. ix. he is speaking of the Direction of Motion, and 
- assures us that “volition is itself an incipient discharge along a 
ine which previous experiences have rendered a line of least 
resistance ; and the passing of volition into action is simply a com- 
pletion of the discharge ;” and he goes on to explain, in the same 
way, a great number of social phenomena, such as “ the flow of 
capital into business yielding the largest returns.” That there 
may be no misapprehension, he says: ‘“ By some it may be said 
that the term force, as here used, is used metaphorically, — that 
to speak of men as zmfelled in certain directions, by certain 
desires, is a figure of speech, and not the statement of a physical 
fact. The reply is, that the foregoing illustrations are to be 
interpreted literally, and that the processes described are phys- 
ical ones.” 

In c. xxi. his subject is Segregation ; and he is showing how, 
in physical operation, there is an advance from the indefinite to 
the definite, and then accounts on this principle for the separa- 
tion of races. ‘Human motions, like all other motions, being 
determined by the distribution of forces, it follows that such 
segregations of races as are not produced by incident external 
forces are produced by forces which the units of the races exer- 
cise on each other.” 

It is by such loose analogies, represented as identities, that 
he is able so easily to account for the production of the universe 
by a few wide laws. 


MR. SPENCER'S PHILOSOPHY. " 369 


8. In his construction of the universe, he fails to discover the 
need of adjustments, in order that the forces may accomplish 
beneficent ends. He seems to derive every thing from what he 
calls the “‘ Persistence of Force,” which is the name he adopts 
to express what is usually called the Conservation of Force; 
that is, the sum of force in the universe, potential and actual, 
is one and the same, and when a force disappears in one form, 
it must appear in another. But every one sees that, but for a 
regulated channel provided for it, blind force might operate in 
destructive quite as readily as beneficent modes. The same 
remark holds good of such laws as that a body follows the path 
of “ Least Resistance,” — that is, in which there is least opposing 
force ; the Instability of the Homogeneous, —that is, with the 
varied operating forces, bodies are not likely to continue in a 
state of rest; the Rhythm of Motion, — that is, that many bodies 
liable to be driven or pulled in a number of ways will proceed in 
curves of various kinds. He shows that from the forces operat- 
ing there must be such operations, as Segregation, Equilibration, 
Dissolution. But all these, but for adjustments, are as capable 
of producing wasting as construction and benignity. That they 
are made to work as they do, I believe Mr. Spencer would 
ascribe to the action of the unknown reality. But when I see 
order, harmony, and happiness everywhere in nature, I argue 
the reality from which it proceeds must possess wisdom and 
beneficence. 


Cambridge: Press of John Wilson & Son. 


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$3.00. 


‘‘ The spirit of these discussions is admirable. Fearless and courteous, McCosh 
never hesitates to bestow praise when merited, nor to attack a heresy wherever found.”? 
— Cong Review. 


wie 
ACADEMIC TEACHING IN EUROPE: Being 


Dr. McCosn’s Address at his Inauguration as President of 
the College of New Jersey. 50 cents. 


VI. 
LAWS OF DISCURSIVE THOUGHT: Being a 


Text-book of Formal Logic. 12mo. $1.50. 


* The position from which Dr. McCosh was called to America was the professor- 
ship of Logic and Metaphysics in Queen’s College, Belfast; and this volume of two 
hundred pages is the fruit of his study and experience in the department of logic. 
It is therefore a condensed but exhaustive exhibition of the principles of the science 
which he has more thoroughly mastered than perhaps any other living man. He 
has made that careful inductive investigation of the operations of the human mind 
which is essential to the constitution of the science, and freely avowing his regard for 
the old logic, which no modern improvements have overthrown, he is fully in harmony 
with whatever the greatest thinkers of subsequent ages, even of our own times, have 
contributed to the subject. The book is admirably adapted to the use of classes 
in schools and colleges, where it will readily and rapidly find its way.””—W. Y. 
Observer. 


VII. 
CHRISTIANITY AND POSITIVISM. A Series of 


Lectures to the Times on Natural Theology and Apologetics. 
12mo. $1.75. . 


-~ROBERT CARTER AND BROTHERS, 


New York. 

















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